Eight Waterloo researchers have received $25,000 each from the Graham Seed Fund (GSF) to support transformative health-tech collaborations. Among the recipients is Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Edith Law.
Designed by the University of Waterloo’s Health Initiatives, the GSF aims to support healthcare projects that address the world’s most pressing challenges. It seeks to leverage and build health system partnerships that extend beyond academia. This round of the GSF centres on strengthening Waterloo’s position in the community by emphasizing partnerships with the Grand River Hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital and the KW4 Ontario Health Team (KW4OHT).
“Waterloo researchers continuously deliver innovative health-care solutions for real-world impact. There has never been a more important time to look at how technology can improve how we deliver health care. Collaborating with the local hospitals and Ontario Health Team shows our commitment to our community and making a difference right here where we live,” says Dr. Catherine Burns, associate vice-president of Health Initiatives.
Professor Law has partnered with the KW4-OHT to design and deploy ‘The Newcomer App’, which helps immigrants and refugees navigate critical health and social services.
The team is addressing the research phenomenon known as the “healthy immigrant effect”.
Although immigrants may exhibit strong health upon their arrival in Canada, their health tends to deteriorate in the long run. This decline is caused by several social determinants of health (SDH), which are non-medical factors that influence someone’s health outcomes. Some examples of SDH include fluctuating income and social status, language and cultural barriers, limited health literacy, changes to their physical surroundings, or social isolation. Hence, this team is designing a suite of web apps that aim to connect immigrants and refugees with various newcomer-serving organizations namely community centres, health clinics, small businesses like ethnic restaurants and grocery stores, and ethnocultural organizations.
In turn, newcomers can seamlessly find resources for housing, healthcare, employment, transportation, and legal or social support in their own language. For example, these apps can provide basic or procedural information such as how to apply for private health insurance or how to survive Canadian winters. In addition, the app will help newcomer-serving organizations connect with each other, opening doors to cross-collaboration and effective knowledge dissemination. By engaging in their health and wellness, this transformative technology can empower immigrants to overcome various systematic challenges such as finding primary care physicians or affordable housing, leading to enhanced health outcomes.
Throughout the design process, the team actively worked with newcomers and organizations in the Kitchener-Waterloo and surrounding areas, to ensure their technology addressed the needs of newcomers. For example, they started their study with one-on-one interview sessions. They also organized a collaborative co-design session and prototype evaluation sessions. In addition, they “integrated Meta’s open-sourced Seamless translation model into the app to help translate content and to provide a tool for newcomers to converse with others in their own language,” says Professor Law. Last month, Meta sponsored the group’s trip to the World AI Summit held in Montreal, where they presented The Newcomer App.
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The research team presented The Newcomer App at the World AI Summit.
Ultimately, the GSF will be used to conduct a field study. The team hopes to distribute the app to local newcomers where they can navigate real-time events and articles in their own language. This study will help examine the app’s effectiveness, particularly its user experience and impact. For example, can it improve a newcomer’s mental health and ability to build connections?
In the future, the team wants to deploy their invention to thousands of newcomers and become the new standard for addressing newcomers’ challenges in Ontario and eventually the rest of Canada.
To learn more about the other research collaborations, please read the UWaterloo News article.
