Innovation Anthology #221:

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The next stage in training for health care professionals may soon place them into virtual environments.

That’s the goal of Dr. Eleni Stroulia at the University of Alberta. She holds the new iCORE Industry Research Chair in Service Systems Management.

The challenge is making these virtual systems user friendly for people not all that comfortable with computers to begin with.

DR. ELENI STROULIA: One is to make the user interface simple. And right now, many of the virtual worlds allow communication with voice. So it could be as simple as talking to your screen especially for people who are elderly and don’t have particular expertise in using systems. What is working for us is that the new generation of students that we are seeing at university are much more trained in playing computer games and they are more confident in using these virtual worlds. So what we’re doing in the software engineering research program is to use this ability of people to play games and to build simulations that will use their knowledge to train them in their own profession instead of making user interfaces in the traditional way that are simply not as intuitive.

That was Dr. Eleni Stroulia.

Thanks today to iCORE.

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

Guest

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Sponsor

iCORE, Informatics Circle of Research Excellence

iCORE was established in October 1999 by the Government of Alberta to foster an expanding community of exceptional researchers in the field of informatics, that is, areas of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, physics, mathematics and other disciplines related to information and communications technology (ICT).

As part of the Government of Alberta’s strategy to create a globally competitive knowledge-based economic sector, iCORE is directing its support to areas in which Alberta has a chance to develop internationally recognized research teams. It is also focusing on areas in which Alberta companies are active, so that intellectual property and valuable knowledge workers resulting from iCORE’s investment will have compelling reasons to stay in Alberta.

iCORE invests in people of the highest calibre, research scientists who work on fundamental and applied problems in informatics. It operates several grant programs to develop iCORE Chairs at Alberta universities, around which world-class research teams are developed. Since its inception, more than 24 research chairs have been established to focus on emerging areas such as wireless communications, artificial intelligence, and quantum and nanocomputing.

The iCORE principle is simple: exceptional people produce exceptional results.

In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, iCORE was restructured and incorporated into the new provincial agency Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.

Program Date: 2009-04-30