5 research finalists put their minds to age-related innovations
Five finalists doing innovative research related to aging have been chosen for $50,000 awards from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
The foundation hosts an event every second year to promote exceptional work done by research institutions and community researchers in the province.
This year's conference takes place April 10-12 in Fredericton.
On April 12, CBC New Brunswick TV host Harry Forestell will co-host the R3 Awards Gala at the Fredericton Convention Centre.
Five researchers will be celebrated, and three will be chosen for Research Innovation Awards of $50,000 each.
A CBC Viewers' Choice Award will also be announced and awarded $15,000 in foundation research funding.
To cast a vote for the finalist you think should win, go to the CBC New Brunswick Facebook page, click on the Video tab and find the playlist, NBIF R3 2018 Finalists — CBC Viewers' Choice Award. Watch videos of each of the five finalists and "like" your favourite.
The finalist with the most likes will win the award and $15,000 in NBIF research funding.
Voting began Monday and continues until midnight on Wednesday, April 11. The winners will be announced at the gala, chosen from among the following.
Road runner
Transportation engineer Trevor Hanson watched his fiercely independent grandmother, who walked and cycled everywhere in her rural community, slowly become dependent. As services disappeared locally, she had to drive to get to them. But she didn't drive.
Hanson, along with master's student Mathieu Godreau, is now studying eight "dial-a-drive" volunteer services in rural communities to create a system to help programs that are growing big, and communities looking to start their own dial-a-drive.
Drug mix
Bad prescription-drug mixes, or over-prescribing, can affect balance both physically and mentally. It can even lead to death. And in long-term care homes, more than 60 per cent of residents take 10 or more classes of medicine.
Pharmacist Carole Goodine says manually reviewing every possible drug interaction, new findings on old drugs, and how aging might be affecting your medication, is a laborious process for busy pharmacists and doctors.
There is a new program developed by two Montreal doctors called MedSafer that automatically does the checking and issues alerts about possible problems.
Goodine and her team are working on a software interface that would allow their already digitized patient information to run through the MedSafer program.
Once upon a time
Stories can be powerful. Having someone trained to listen and record your story can relieve anxiety and depression.
A team of professional story gatherers from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at St. Thomas University, wants to create a program that would train people in how to extract, listen and record stories.
They're "taking it to the streets" and want anyone working with the elderly to be able to use the power of stories to change their lives.
Nursing homes without walls
Suzanne Dupuis-Leblanc thinks the local nursing home in your community could help seniors live in their own homes longer.
Whether it is using a home's van to collect the community's seniors for rides into town, providing social gatherings and meals, or extending the foot care services, all can help seniors stay in their homes longer.
What blew her away was that all 65 of the nursing homes she surveyed agreed.
Dupuis-Leblanc calls it "a nursing home without walls."
Healthy home checkups
Imagine a person knocking on your door to take your blood pressure, your weight, the air quality in the room, and your heart rate, then having a short chat about how you are feeling.
Engineer Erik Scheme has 17 people on his team for his pitch, called "Pitch." The idea is for portable technology to be deployed to monitor your health conditions, even when you're healthy, so that if something changes, you'll be the first to know.
It's all about preventing illnesses that can put you in the hospital.
