and I'm going to start by now that I've
introduced myself by introducing our
first speaker dr. Ashley Smith so
Ashley's going to talk to us about the
potential of technology in health
especially healthcare including aiding
in aiding and diagnosis improving
treatment and enhancing care Ash will
share some examples of where technology
has an enormous potential and we look
forward to the future and so Ash is an
early career neuro researcher
physiologist whose research is
positioned at the nexus of neuroscience
exercise physiology and cognitive aging
in 2017 her research excellence and
outstanding community engagement in
science was recognized with the South
Australian Tall Poppy award. Ash was
really instrumental in having early
discussions with us as we started to
build this exhibition so it's a real
pleasure to have her with us tonight
welcome ash.
thank you so much for that kind introduction yeah it's great to be
here tonight to talk about four things
so I've got 10 minutes to talk to you
about four things that I believe we have
strengths in, in South Australia and also
that I believe will be important for
future reality of health. So that without
further adeiu the first two things I'd
like to talk about is virtual and
augmented reality so a virtual and
augmented reality we know can both
change our perceptions of the world in
vastly different ways. So in virtual
reality we can create worlds and we can
take a person from this room and
have them experience the world outside
of this room but what it does is it
leaves that person blind to what's
happening in this room right now.
The other technology that I'd like to talk a
little bit about tonight is augmented
reality which is like it's been
explained to virtual reality is like
going swimming with sharks whereas
aumented reality is bringing different
perceptions into this room into your
world so it would be like as if a shark
appeared out of the screen towards you
guys. Just to use a Back To The Future
reference. But who better than to talk a little bit more
about the differences between virtual and
augmented reality than Pepsi ad? And I
really like this particular ad and
hopefully it will load. I don't have any
sound on it
so you get the idea from this ad how
augmented reality in this case can be used
to sell Pepsi. But let's talk about how
these technologies can be used to
improve healthcare or improve rehab and
so one thing one project is undergoing
is underway at the moment at the
University of South Australia is using
virtual reality to improve
rehabilitation for people with chronic
pain and there's some key features about
virtual reality that really make this a
really exciting potential so it's
immersive, its motivational, we can add
gamification so we can keep people
engaged in rehabilitation a little bit
more. We can get visual feedback give
visual feedback to the people on how
they're progressing in their
rehabilitation. We can motion track them
we can send data directly to their
clinicians and then something else that
we're working on is we're improving the
exercise experience for people with
virtual reality so there's a certain
group of people who don't enjoy exercise
and we're using virtual reality
environments to try and improve the
exercise experience there. So virtual
reality has a vast potential in the
future of health and rehabilitation.
This is another project that I'd like to
quickly talk to you about that I'm
involved in at the University of South
Australia my background I'll just get
the video running and whilst I talk to
you a little bit about this some of you
may have had an opportunity to have a
look at this technology out in the foyer
my background is in neuroscience I use a
particular technique called transcranial
magnetic stimulation which is this
technique here and one of the biggest
problems we have is being able to
accurately guide stimulation so I
started talking to Dr. Ross Smith at the
University of South Australia and we're
improving the accuracy of guiding
stimulation for patients and
participants in our research studies by
directly projecting somebody's MRI image
directly onto their brain
so that's one way that we're using
augmented reality technology to
understand a little bit more about the
brain and it we started off with this
because I was interested in improving
my research outcomes but there are a lot
of other opportunities for this and
future opportunities maybe to pair
augmented reality stimulation with
guiding treatment of say some MRI guided
cancer treatment for example. So I know I
don't have a lot of time and I always
like showing robots where I can i was
recently in the USA last week and I went
to conference the Alzheimers Association
Conference and at this conference I got
the opportunity to play with this little
guy. So these are robots that are being
used for dementia companions so for
people living with dementia and there is
sound on this. Sorry there shouldn't be.
So these robots have tactile sensors on
them so people with dementia can
touch the robots and the robots will
move and respond to their stimulation
one of the other really cool features of
them is that the robots modify their
behavior based on AI software and the
robots themselves show some really great
emotion. I think this picture captures it
all yeah I was I was ready to take this
robot home and trade it in for my dog.
And finally in the last couple of
minutes this is not something that I'm
involved in but I think it would be very
remiss of me not to talk about it in a
future of realities for health care talk
this is a Flex Flinders driverless
shuttle so this bus is a driverless bus
and you can actually book a ticket to go
and sit on this bus and there's huge
potential for this for older people for
example people who are
currently housebound unable to get
out and be social. So driverless
transport is a huge area where people
are considering improvements in the
future. I just finally like to wrap up
whenever we design new
technologies we need to have some
considerations for these technologies so
are we creating technology that people
actually want? are we talking to our
target audience and is this something
that they actually want? to use an
example from the driverless bus I was
talking to a sociologist recently who
said actually driverless buses will
remove the one thing that isolated older
adults don't have currently rely on
their bus driver for and that's a social
interaction. So if we remove that
bus driver who keeps an eye on older
people then what are the implications
for that older person? so we need to
start thinking about this when we're
designing new technologies. In terms of
the dementia of robots will we lose the
human connection will robots
replace that connection? and
that's a really important consideration
for technologies.
Are there other ethical considerations?
I'm sure we've all seen those movies I
guess they're things that the
researchers and future health
professionals and future technology
professionals need to start thinking
about and continue thinking about and
then also particularly important for
South Australia how are we going to
train the next generations of leaders in
this space? and how do we best design our
university courses and our training
programs to to train people up in health
as well as technology? So they're just my
considerations for new technologies I
hope to hear some more thoughts in the
Q&A session from the audience so thank
you very much
[Applause]
thanks ash I like you I like your
question around you know we're designing
technologies people want it sounds like
such an obvious question but so
often the design of technology starts
with this would be cool but this would
be cool and useful I think is a better
it's a better kind of lens to put on
that and I also thought the
point you make about how we designing
that with users you know so we were
conscious when we designed MOD. that we
did that with our target audience I like
the way that you're thinking about how
do you actually involve the dementia
patient? how do you involve the
person that you're trying to provide the
service for? and then I'm curious
also to pick up that that thing about
how real are the realities? you know if
you exercise in virtual reality is that
worse than exercising in nature? not if
you do more exercise I mean I think
there's lots of really interesting
questions I'm one of those people that
doesn't particularly like exercise I'm
not sure that I would do it in a virtual
or a real world so just sort of picking
up that question about how real are
those other realities? and and how are we
blurring that line between the digital
and physical space? which people been
talking about for 10 to 15 years but
actually seeing some of those examples
makes it a little bit more real for us
so thank you