The way you walk can say a lot about you, but until recently scientists could only study gait in a laboratory environment. With the latest advancements in sensory technology, all that has changed.

Join Professor William Gage, associate dean of research & innovation in the Faculty of Health (FoH) at York, and Professor Andrew Eckford of York’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering in the Faculty of Science & Engineering (FSE), for the launch of the eHealth Alliance brown bag lecture series. They will discuss the importance of accelerometers in studying the walking behaviour and interactions of participants in their natural environment.

Right: William Gage

The first eHealth Alliance lecture, “Wireless Accelerometers to Monitor Walking Activity and Behaviour”, will take place Thursday, Oct. 20, from 3 to 4pm at 402 Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building (HNES), Keele campus.

Gage and Eckford will also look at why these walking measurements are changing how scientists understand the activity levels of healthy individuals, and importantly, how illness and injury alter activity levels.

“We will describe the development our sensor system and contrast this development with other sensor systems in the literature; we will focus the application of our measurement system with healthy individuals, patients with stroke and patients with knee replacement,” says Gage, also a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science, where he teaches a graduate level course in biomechanics and neuromuscular control of posture and gait.

Left: Andrew Eckford

Gage holds scientific appointments as an associate scientist in the Centre for Stroke Recovery at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre and as a scientist at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. He is particularly interested in how balance and walking are affected by age, by joint disease, such as arthritis, and by stroke.

A graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and the University of Toronto, Eckford has written many papers on wireless networking and has research interests in wearable wireless networks, as well as signal processing for biomechanics. He also holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Toronto.

The eHealth Alliance came about after some 30 faculty members from the School of Health Policy & Management, FoH, and the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, FSE, got together. They discussed the need for building a York alliance in e-health that would bring the two Faculties together with relevant York and external partners, such as industry leaders, York Region hospitals and the Central LHIN - Local Health Integration Network, says Professor Serban Dinca, undergraduate program director, coordinator of the Health Informatics Certificate in the School of Health Policy & Management and eHealth Alliance chair.

“The eHealth Alliance lecture series is the first step in coagulating the alliance and making connections with the industry,” says Dinca.

See the following list for upcoming eHealth Alliance lecture presenters:

• Nov. 17 - Serban Dinca, undergraduate program director and coordinator of the Health Informatics Certificate in the School of Health Policy & Management, from 3 to 4pm at 402 HNES Building
• Dec. 15 - Amir Asif, chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, from 3 to 4pm at 3033 Computer Science & Engineering Building
• Jan. 19 - Harvey Skinner, dean of the Faculty of Health, from 3 to 4pm at 402 HNES Building
• Feb. 16 - Professor Farah Ahmad of the School of Health Policy & Management, from 3 to 4pm at 402 HNES Building

Republished courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin.