Mobile and Electronic Health ARC’s 2nd Annual Symposium Held
On Thursday, November 2, 2017, the Mobile and Electronic Health Affinity Research Collaborative (ME-ARC) held their 2nd Annual Symposium in the BUSM Hiebert Lounge. The ME-ARC collaborative is comprised of health professionals from The Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM), Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston University Sargent College, Boston Medical Center, and the Boston University Hariri Institute & Software and Application Innovation Lab (SAIL). GSDM’s own Dr. Belinda Borrelli, Professor in the Department of Health Policy & Health Services, and Director of the Center for Behavioral Science Research, is the ME ARC program Director.
The afternoon began with opening remarks from Dr. Borrelli; Dr. Karen Antman, BUMC Provost; and Dr. David Coleman, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine.
The first and keynote presentation, titled “mHealth: Monitoring, Modeling, Modifying and Maintaining Health-Related Behavior Change in Real-Time,” was given by Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz from the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Spruijt-Metz is the Director of the USC mHealth Collaboratory. She uses mobile technologies to develop data sets that combine temporally dense and highly contextualized sensor and self-report data along with innovative modeling techniques to develop dynamic, individual mathematical models of health-related behavior. She was one of the first to undertake just-in-time, adaptive intervention (JITAI) in youth.
Dr. Jacob Groshek from the BU College of Communications was the second speaker. His presentation was titled, “Healthy Influencers? Social Media Use, Misinformation, and Health Behavior Change”. Dr. Groshek’s research focuses on the democratic utility of communication technologies and the ways in which structure, content and uses of online and mobile media may influence sociopolitical change.
Dr. Keith McInnes was the third speaker, delivering his presentation “Mobile Health in Two Populations: Addressing Chronic Disease Management Through Text Message”. Dr. McInnes is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management at the BU School of Public Health. He is also a Health Scientist at the VA Medical Center in Bedford, MA. His research expertise is in the areas of patient-centered health informatics and quality of chronic disease health care across vulnerable populations.
The last presentation was a panel discussion on the “Opportunities and Challenges in Academy-Industry Partnerships. Four industry experts, Dr. Andrei Lapets, Dr. Swathi Kiran, Dr. Y Xian Ho, and Nick Dougherty were the panel speakers. Dr. Lisa Quintiliani, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Co-Director of ME-ARC moderated the panel discussion.
More photos from the Symposium can be found on Flickr.