IALS and MassAITC Host “Powering Healthy Aging” Event at Hadley Senior Center
IALS, in partnership with the Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging & Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC), recently organized a “Powering Healthy Aging” event in coordination with the Hadley Senior Center and Council on Aging held on April 25th, 2024. MassAITC fosters interdisciplinary research on the development, validation, and translation of AI-enhanced technologies to improve connections between older adults, caregivers, and clinicians in order to more effectively support healthy aging and the care of people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias at home.
Attendance at the event was strong, with close to fifty older adults from within Hadley and the surrounding areas present. Representatives from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s Age Friendly Pioneer Valley Initiative, WestMass ElderCare, and local senior living organizations were also present. The event was centered on sharing best health practices to enable older adults to continue to live independently and to explain how technologies being developed for older adults, such as AgeTech, can support these best health practices and activities of daily living.
As part of the event, Rebecca Spencer, Sleep Lab Director and IALS faculty member, shared best sleep practices for older adults that they can use to improve their quality of life day-to-day, including tips on falling asleep, staying asleep, creating a consistent sleep routine, and how new technologies are enable us to better track and improve our sleep. Sufficient, good quality sleep is an important aspect of keeping seniors living as independently as possible and is thought to play a vital role in preventing dementia.
David Paquette, MassAITC Associate Research Director and Computer Science Senior Researcher, and Ravi Karkar, IALS Center for Personalized Health Monitoring (CPHM) faculty and Assistant Professor of Computer Science, shared information about how AI can be integrated into everyday life and used in conjunction with AgeTech to improve daily healthful living practices and maintenance of independence in instrumental activities of daily living.
Mike Busa, Director of the IALS Center for Human Health and Performance (CH2P), CH2P faculty members, and staff kicked off the showcase portion of the event. The team shared details about their research center and allowed attendees to play with the technologies from several of the active studies that CH2P is working on in cooperation with industry partners. Additionally, a member of MassAITC funded industry partner representatives were on hand to showcase their research, including VR headsets for cognitive and physical fitness and novel AI wearables for real-time health monitoring with the seniors. Interested older adults engaged in thoughtful conversation with the research teams and were able to sign up to participate in a number of these studies.
IALS is appreciative of the opportunity to present to and connect with local older adults and provide them with solutions to improve the quality of their daily lives. Additionally, having local community members volunteer as research participants adds a deeper level of meaning and impact to these studies, and our researchers are grateful for the opportunity to share their research with the Hadley Senior Center. As an integral partner with MassAITC, IALS is excited to continue fostering research and innovation to improve lives and address critical health-care issues in an aging society.
