This week’s SARNIF blog highlights Hector Perez, a postdoctoral fellow who works with Dr. Lili Liu and Dr. Antonio Miguel-Cruz and has a background in technology management. Hector works on Data Project SARNIF initiative, which aims to fill the knowledge gap of data on missing persons living with dementia.
Currently, he is helping to clean up, refine, and analyze the collected data from associated partners such as MedicAlert and Edmonton Police Services to ensure consistency amongst different data sources. Through this initiative the team will collaborate with multiple police services across Canada to understand the nature of police records on missing incidents involving persons living with dementia. Hector hopes to help his team create strong data collection standards as well as verification of data surrounding missing persons living with dementia to ensure that it is machine readable and can be easily analyzed and interpreted. Further, Hector expects to determine what characteristics make a person living with dementia more susceptible to going missing and how we can proactively prevent this from occurring.
Photograph Credits: Hector Perez