News

Dr. Helen Chen is bringing the food inspection project to the 84th CIPHI Ontario Branch Annual Educational Conference, held October 14–16, 2026 at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her session, co-presented with Phil Wong from Toronto Public Health (TPH), is titled “Harmonizing Food Inspection Data to Support Predictive Public Health Practice”.

The talk speaks directly to this year’s conference theme, The Evolving Role of Environmental Public Health, and its “Adapting the Toolkit” stream, which focuses on modernizing public health practice through new tools and technologies. The public health inspectors, decision-makers, and researchers from across Ontario sit at the front line of the food safety inspection system that Waterloo’s team aims to strengthen.

Dr. Helen Chen, of the School of Public Health Sciences, is leading the University of Waterloo’s role in a new cross-Canada consortium building a Synthetic Data Network (SDN) — an effort to unlock the value of health data while protecting patient privacy.

We are pleased to announce that the Agentic GenAI-Enabled Psychotherapeutic Interventions for Well-Being: A Pilot Research Study of Feasibility and Safety has received Research Ethics Board (REB) approval.

This first-of-its-kind pilot study will evaluate the feasibility and safety of Doro, an agentic generative AI application designed to deliver psychotherapeutic interventions for well-being. The results will help guide the development of a future large-scale clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of GenAI-enabled psychotherapeutic interventions.

Participant recruitment will begin soon, with additional details to be shared in the coming weeks.

Nauman Shakeel presented his paper Integrating AI Scribe Technology into Public Health Workflows: Simulation and Field Evaluation in Disease Case Management at the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) 2026 conference May 28, 2026. 

This project explored the integration of AI-assisted documentation into infectious disease management workflows within public health settings, with the goal of reducing administrative burden and improving workflow efficiency.

After receiving the 2026 Elaine Hector Student Award for the best student abstract, GenAI for Health lab member Edson Kenzo Takei presented his research at the APHEO-OPHEN Conference. His presentation explored how artificial intelligence can be used to evaluate the quality of AI scribe tools for infectious disease case management, contributing to important conversations about the responsible implementation of AI in public health practice.

We are pleased to announce yet another successful thesis defence this week, this time to Yixin Li on successfully defending his thesis, "A Comprehensive Evaluation Framework for Synthetic ECG: Assessing Fidelity, Utility, and Privacy", April 30, 2026.

Congratulations, Yixin, on this well-deserved accomplishment!

We are pleased to congratulate one of our lab members Kateryna Padalko on the successful defence of her thesis, "Adaptive Differential Privacy Budgeting Strategy for Optimizing Synthetic Data Generation and Privacy Protection in Healthcare".

Congratulations Kateryna on this well-deserved accomplishment!

A long-time member of the GenAI for Health research lab will be featured in a keynote session at the 2026 APHEO-OPHEN Conference as part of the “Full Sailing into Artificial Intelligence!” series. His presentation will explore the use of artificial intelligence to assess the quality of AI scribe tools in infectious disease case management, highlighting the importance of evaluating emerging technologies in real-world public health settings. This work reflects the lab’s commitment to advancing innovative, data-driven approaches and showcases the impact of its members in shaping the future of AI in health systems.

Modern health care often leaves patients unsupported between visits, contributing to worsening conditions and preventable readmissions. Doro, a startup from the University of Waterloo’s Velocity program co-founded by Rastin Rassoli, is developing clinically guided AI tools to bridge these gaps by continuously supporting patients before, between, and after care. Using patient-reported data, the platform monitors symptoms, offers evidence-based mental health support, and helps clinicians maintain better visibility into patient well-being. Designed specifically for clinical use, Doro emphasizes safety, privacy, and validation, and is being tested in areas such as mental health, addiction, and chronic illness, with the goal of improving recovery and reducing strain on the health-care system.

A University of Waterloo research team is using machine learning to speed up drug development by analyzing complex pharmaceutical data and predicting drug properties, interactions, and safety outcomes. Led by Dr. Helen Chen, with PhD candidate Bing Hu and applied mathematician Dr. Anita Layton, the team integrates biological and medical knowledge into their models to improve accuracy and better reflect real-world drug behavior.