KIM GRABER: Good afternoon, and welcome to this very exciting presentation. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Wendy Rogers. Dr. Rogers is [INAUDIBLE] at Ann Carlson, Professor of Applied Health Sciences. Her primary appointment is in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. But she also has appointments in educational psychology and is an affiliate of the Beckman Institute, in Illinois Informatics Institute, Center for Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Discovery Partners Institute. So that's very impressive.

She received her BA from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and her MS and PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She's a certified Human Factors Professional, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. She's been recognized for her mentoring activities with many awards.

Her research interests include design for aging, technology acceptance, human automation interaction, aging in place, human robot interaction, aging with disabilities, cognitive aging, skill acquisition, and training. She is the Director of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home and Health Technology Education Program, Program Director of the Collaboration in Health Aging Research and Technology, and Director of the Human Factors in Aging Laboratory. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health through the National Institute on Aging and by multiple other agencies.

Although I am continuously amazed by Dr. Rogers's professional accomplishments, what I appreciate the most about her is that she is an amazing faculty member who contributes significantly to the growth and mentorship of our students and junior faculty. She is someone who gives back by passing her knowledge to the next generation. Here's Wendy. [LAUGHING]

WENDY ROGERS: Thank you so much. That's very nice. We joked when we were talking about the introduction. I said, you don't even have to say anything. Just say, here's Wendy. And that will be sufficient. But that was lovely. Thank you.

All right. Let me get organized here. OK. Kim, can you see my screen and everything OK?

KIM GRABER: Yes. Everything looks fabulous.

WENDY ROGERS: Great. Thank you. You're my check.

OK. Welcome, everybody. I'm really delighted to have been given the honor of presenting to our alumni and our guests this afternoon. And I'm going to talk about technology design to support health generally, and then in particular, to support successful aging. And what you're looking at is our official lab PowerPoint template that has members of our family represented at the bottom.

As Kim mentioned, I wear a lot of different hats here at the university. And so I want to give an overview of a number of different things. I'll first talk about CHART and explain more about what that is all about. I'll then tell you a bit about my lab, the Human Factors and Aging Lab and some of the research that we do. And then I want to take you on a virtual tour of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home, which is just being completed. We're putting the finishing touches on it. And then I also want to introduce you to the Health Technology Education Program, which is a new program that we've developed.

So let's start just by setting the context. You probably have all heard about the fact that populations are getting older. I like this graphic that the World Health Organization put out. What it is showing is the percentage of individuals over the age of 60. Now, the World Health Organization uses 60 as its cutoff for older adults. Here in the US, we usually use 65 as the typical retirement age. But these data are for aged 60 plus.

The light blue is showing that, for those segments of the population, 10% to 30% are already over the age of 60. And for the dark blue, 30% of the population is over the age of 60.

Now, look what happens when we project into the future. You see many more light blue and even more that are turning dark blue. And so the key to remember is that, no matter what we're thinking about, we need to recognize that there's an increasing number of older adults in our communities.

I had one of our undergrads, one of our fabulous University of Illinois undergrads, do the same thing for data from Illinois. And so what we show here-- and outlined in red is Champaign County, is the increasing percentage of people over the age of 60 in our state. And what you see is, some of these counties are going to have over 40% of their population that will be over the age of 60. These data come from the Illinois Department on Aging.

So I encourage you to look at, if you're interested in learning more about aging, the WHO put out this really wonderful report on aging and health. I always like to highlight the fact that the woman who did the painting on the cover was age 81. And she won an award. And her painting was chosen for the cover of this report. And it's freely available for download.

And I'm going to show you a couple of slides that they actually provide. One is to help us think about healthy aging as an investment and not a cost. If we invest in health systems, long term care, lifelong learning, age friendly environments, those investments are going to have benefits, health benefits, increasing skills and knowledge in our older adults, mobility, social connectivity.

And these benefits are going to have return, not only in terms of individual well-being, but also in terms of workforce participation, consumption, supporting the economy, innovation. And so thinking about it this way, I think, is very useful. And they also remind us that the overall goal is to think about, how can we maximize functional ability.

Now, when I first learned about this report, I was very interested in what they set out as priority areas for action. And thinking about, if we're going to really improve the aging experience, we need to improve our measurement, our monitoring, and our understanding of where we are currently. We need to align our health systems to the older populations that we're currently serving. We need to develop long term care systems to address these changing numbers and ensure that everyone can grow old in an age-friendly environment.

And so this report is really the precursor to what is now the decade of healthy aging. And there are a number of initiatives, and we'll be doing some ourselves through CHART, to support this decade of healthy aging.

And so this really sets the context for CHART. What is CHART? Chart is Collaborations in Health Aging, Research, and Technology. Brian Pastor is the program coordinator who works closely with me on CHART.

And let me just tell you a little bit more about it. It's a research theme in the College of Applied Health Sciences. So it's an interdisciplinary program. And we bring faculty from across campus. Also, we integrate with community members, industry partners, healthcare providers, all with this common goal to promote aging successfully through technology. And I encourage you to go to our website to learn more about it.

We have a wonderful steering committee that is made up of faculty from the College of Applied Health Sciences, as well as from Engineering and Educational Psychology. And we also have people from the community, CHRIS Healthy Aging Center and Kathleen Holden and Deb Reardanz from Clark-Lindsey Village. So the steering committee helps to guide the activities that we do in CHART.

So our mission is to enable successful aging in a number of different ways. So fundamental research efforts are critical, thinking about technology developments, but also, education, so educating researchers, developers, professionals, as well as the older adults themselves about the potential for technology. Providing guidance for policy decision making, and really very important to me, and one of the reasons I came to the University of Illinois in 2017, to be in the College of Applied Health Sciences, to have the opportunity to translate all of these activities that we are doing to positively affect the lives of older adults.

What we've done in CHART, Brian and I have put together resources for faculty who are affiliated with us. We can support participant recruitment. Brian's master's degree is in Regulatory and Ethics. He can provide consultation. We link to the community and support research dissemination, student engagement. We have a good sense of what different faculty across campus are doing. We try to connect people. We collaborate with industry, as well as with health care organizations.

So CHART is at the intersection of health care, technology, aging, and human factors. And so what I'd like to do is tell you a little bit about my own lab. There are multiple labs affiliated with CHART. I obviously know mine the best. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about the research that we're doing in our lab.

And first, I wanted to start by introducing you to our team. I had told them it was picture day. So lots of people are wearing orange and their Illinois shirts. And so we've managed to survive and really thrive. My students and staff are just amazing. And so we have our Zoom meetings. We're continuing to make progress. Students are continuing to work on their degrees and take their classes. And I think they've all been very inspired by the fact that the research that we're doing is very important, and even been made more clear in the current state of the world.

So let me tell you a little bit about what we do. So this idea of human factors might not be familiar to you. Human factors is defined as the study of the characteristics of people and their interactions, interactions with products, with environments, with equipment. And it's thinking about the needs and capabilities of users when you're designing systems, devices, training and instructions, or environments as a whole. And so when you think human factors, the shorthand term is designing for human use.

And in our lab, we focus on human factors and aging. And so we're explicitly trying to understand the abilities, limitations, needs, and preferences of older adults. And we work very closely with older adults to design technologies that are going to be both usable and useful to them.

We also pay close attention to ensuring that we're developing training and instruction. It's not enough to design a technology. You have to teach people how to use that and provide support for that. And then, also thinking about deployment and the introduction of those technologies widespread, supporting people who may have lower socioeconomic status or less technology experience.

So we think about successful aging broadly. I'd like you to meet my parents. Here they are, dancing at their 50th wedding anniversary. And they're my inspiration.

When we think about successful aging, we think about functioning effectively and independently. Maintaining personal autonomy, retaining and enhancing abilities, managing health, both chronic conditions as well as maintaining your overall wellness, remaining socially engaged and participating in one's community, and in general, thinking about how we can maximize an individual's quality of life.

And so we take a very broad view of successful aging. So when you think about, what do older adults need to do successfully, there's a group of activities that are called activities of daily living, bathing, eating, drinking, moving about your space.

The second category are things that tend to be a little bit more cognitively intensive, a little bit more involved. And these are called instrumental activities of daily living. And these include things like preparing meals, paying bills, managing medication, and maintaining the home.

When we first started working a lot in this space, Dan Fisk and I were interested in exploring, what are the needs of older adults. And we conducted an in-depth interview study with them. And we asked them, what are all the different things you're doing on a daily basis? And sure, they mentioned activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living.

But they also told us about a lot of other things that they do that were not being considered in the research. And so we coined a new term called enhanced activities of daily living. And this encompasses everything else, so social communication, hobbies, new learning, work, volunteering, community participation. And so when we think about successful aging, we need to think about all of these different categories.

It's also very important to remember that there's no such thing as the older adult. There's no typical older person. So because of their history, older adults vary widely in health conditions, functional cognitive status, culture, education, literacy, where do they live, what they've done, what they're interested in. All of these things are going to vary across individuals. And these differences may affect how we design technology or how we provide instructions about using that technology. So it's important to remember that 65 and over isn't one user group. There are probably multiple different groups.

So our lab is affiliated with three federally-funded centers. I just want to introduce them very briefly. The CREATE Center, which is the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement, has been funded since 1999. So it's a group of individuals from Florida State, Weill Cornell Medicine, and the University of Illinois. And we focus on designing technology for everybody, for all of us. As we get older, how might we design technology to support our everyday activities. And this center is funded by the National Institute on Aging.

In 2013, we received funding from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. And here, we're focused on supporting older adults who have long-term disabilities. And so in this center, we focus on individuals who have either perceptual disabilities, they're blind or deaf, or they have mobility disabilities.

And then just last year, we received funding for another center, also from [? Neidler. ?] And here, the focus is on cognition. And so this center is about Enhancing Neurocognitive Health, Abilities, Networks, and Community Engagement. And we're focusing on individuals who have cognitive impairment, either due to mild cognitive impairment which may be a precursor to Alzheimer's or other dementia, have had a traumatic brain injury and are now getting older, or have had a stroke and are getting older and having cognitive challenges.

In the Human Factors and Aging Lab, we research a number of different technology innovations in the context of these research centers. One area that we're focusing on is called digital therapeutics. And here, we're designing a system that we're calling MEDSRem, which is an acronym that I'm showing you here, is to provide education as well as decision support, reminding, and monitoring for older adults who have hypertension.

We're also exploring the potential of digital home assistance such as the Amazon Echo. And in these projects, we're especially focused on the potential of using this technology to support older adults living at home with a mobility disability, how might we use this technology to help them control their environment.

We're also working with a company called OneClick.chat, where we're exploring the potential of using video chat for social engagement. And so it's not just using video chat for a meeting. It's using a video chat platform to provide people with enriching experiences, going to museums, meeting other people, having conversations, so really socially enriching experiences.

And in another project, we're looking at a platform that we designed explicitly for older adults. This is on a tablet. And it gives you easy access to email, the internet, in a streamlined format that's been tested with older adults. And we're looking at the potential of using this for older adults who live alone, and who prior to our study did not have a computer. And so we've provided them with this tablet, with this platform, and assessing the benefits for cognitive engagement and social support.

Another main area of research in our lab that I'm going to spend a little bit more time on is design of robots. So how would we design a robot to support successful aging? We need to think about, what do robots need to do? So they need to communicate with humans. They need to maybe show emotions. They might need to perform tasks for the person. Certainly, they need to be trustworthy. They know, we found that they have to have an appearance that people like, and maybe provide some type of social support.

We have explored a number of different types of robots. I'll introduce a couple of them to you. Telepresence robots that can move about, where you're somewhere else and you're moving your robot in a different space, assistive robots that might-- some of which-- and I'll show you some pictures of what these look like. Mobile manipulators that can pick things up for you, or they can use a camera to look at your space to help you find, what's in my pantry, if you have difficulty getting in and out of the pantry, for example. Or even just to provide navigation support through unfamiliar locations. And then, of course, there's the category of social robot. And that's me with my friendly robot named Paro.

So one of our projects that we're looking at is focused on this idea of socially assistive robots. And these are robots that are assistive. They provide some kind of assistance to a user. But they're also socially interactive. So they communicate with the user through either social or non-physical kinds of interactions.

And so I'm showing you some pictures of different types of socially assistive robots. And in this project, we're looking at really older adults' attitudes about these kinds of robots, what would be their concerns about using them, what do they like, what don't they like, what might be some facilitators and barriers to introducing these robots into the lives of older adults.

Another project is in collaboration with the Grainger College of Engineering and OSF HealthCare. And this is looking at a service robot that might support health care at home. And so if you look at the left picture, what it's showing is, you can have a rigid arm at the end of your robot. And then out of that can come a softer arm that is not likely to break something.

And so the illustration here is, I might need a rigid arm to reach up to the top shelf. But then I want this flexible arm at the end to grab the item that I'm interested in or to hand it off to a person. And so this project is currently under review through the Jump Arches Program. So we're hoping to get that off the ground next year.

Another project that is also in collaboration with the Grainger College of Engineering with Katie Driggs-Campbell was just funded by the Illinois Campus Research Board. And we'll be starting this in January.

And the idea here is to provide way finding assistance for people who have a visual impairment through mobile robotics. And so we'll be using the LIFE Home, I'm going to show you a little bit more about that in a few minutes, the LIFE Home for testing of this robot, where the robot is going to have to be able to sense what's in the environment and predict where it needs to move, plan motions. For example, if furniture has been moved or if there's something on the floor, it can plan a route that goes around that and guide the individual, and potentially reduce trips and falls. So that's the basic idea of what we'll be exploring in this project.

Another project that we're looking at is in collaboration with a company called Hello Robot that was co-founded by 2 PhDs from MIT, Aaron Edsinger Charlie Kemp. But Charlie and I worked together for many years at Georgia Tech. And they've started a company with-- this is their first product. Its name is Stretch. And so you can see us with Stretch here at the LIFE Home.

And this is illustrating-- and I'll show you a couple of pictures and a video. But what's key about Stretch is it has fine motor control. So here, it is picking up a pen that was dropped on the floor. It has very fine motor control, telescoping abilities to move up and down. And let me just show you what it can do.

So for example, you can think of using this robot as a way to provide a delivery of something, could be a bottle of water, could be medication, could be food. It can also do things for you in the home, for example, reaching and turning on the light, or reaching across the sink. You might think of somebody who's in a wheelchair might not be able to reach all the way across the sink to get a sprayer, or opening cabinet doors for you.

And so we've been exploring-- we have one of the stretch robots in the life home right now. And we've been exploring, what are some of the different capabilities of this robot. But also, how might people control it to get it to do what they want it to do. Let me show you this very short video.

And so right now, Stretch is being remote controlled, actually by Dr. [? Horschel ?] [? Mahajan, ?] who's in another room. And he's using Stretch to deliver a bottle of water to me. You'll see me in the frame in just a moment. Notice, we're doing our proper social distancing in the home.

And so this is just a simple illustration of how the robot can be controlled by somebody else outside to help the person in the home environment, which leads us to the McKechnie Family LIFE Home. I want to tell you more about that. That's where some of the research that I've been showing you has been done.

So first, I would like to introduce Karen and Jim McKechnie. Their very generous donation enabled us to name this facility the McKechnie Family LIFE Home. And [? Horschel, ?] who I mentioned, is the Assistant Director of Research. And Brian also provides us with some operational support.

So LIFE is an acronym. And it stands for Living in Interactive Future Environments. And this facility has just been completed on campus. And it's a multipurpose space. So it provides opportunities for research to support all different kinds of activities for all ages, abilities. It's not just about aging. It's about anybody's activities in the home.

The orange area up here at the top is the home simulation space. And then we also have an observation area that has a one-way mirror that allows you to see into that space to observe people's interactions with the technology, for example.

We also have event space. And I'm going to take you on a little virtual tour in just a few moments. But the blue space is development and a collaborative space. And the orange space is the home simulation area.

So let's start by looking at the research spaces. So as you can see, we've set up the home to look like a typical home. It's much cleaner perhaps, or less cluttered than the typical home. But it has everything that your home would have. So we have the living spaces. We have the kitchen area you can see off in the distance, a dining area. And so this will enable us to do testing and usability studies, behavioral research studies, in a home environment that feels like a home environment and has a lot of the same constraints as a home environment would.

We also have two bedrooms. One is set up as a home office. And the other one is set up as a typical bedroom. And this one is labeled Bedroom with Observation, because there's an observation window into this bedroom. And this just allows a whole host of different types of research that can be done in these different contexts.

One of the things that we really tried to ensure when we were designing the home was to make it as flexible as possible, so that whatever research is coming down from our university faculty or industry partners, we can accommodate that in this research facility.

In addition-- so here's the observation room that I was telling you about. So there's the observation space where you can view into the dining room, the living room, and the bedroom. But as well, we have cameras throughout the house. So all of the blue dots are where there's cameras and microphones. And so we can record these interactions, stream them to outside of the home, save them for more in-depth data analytics after the fact.

We also have collaborative spaces. So we have a conference room and a gathering hall. So the conference room up here at the top, it looks like it's one large table. But it's actually four tables. It's completely reconfigured arable for different types of classroom activities. And you'll see in a few moments how we're using it this semester for one of our classes. We also have this on the far right here, the glass doors all open out. So you can have a larger space between the conference room and the gathering hall for hosting community events, for example.

We have the Remote Access Laboratory, which will enable us to simulate, for example, a telehealth situation where the health care provider is in a different area and is interfacing with somebody that's in the home simulation area. We might also use it for telerobotics. I was just showing you the remote control robot. We can have this space to simulate those situations for our development.

We also have the Arthur D. Fisk Interview Room. Meet Dan Fisk, who made a generous donation to name this particular space in the LIFE Home. And this room provides a space for qualitative research assessments, mixed methods data collection. We have video and audio capabilities, both recording and displaying capabilities in this space.

We have what we're calling the Transport and Transitions Laboratory, which right now, we're using it as overflows base for the class that we're hosting there. But eventually, this would be a place for a driving simulator, for occupational therapy activities or first responder research and virtual reality applications. Anything, really. I mean again, this space was designed to be very flexible. And there's also a laundry room off the garage over here as well.

The Health Technology Innovation Lab is going to be a space for research events, for classes. We can also host design competitions here or hackathons. So again, a very flexible space that's just a place for students to be working and developing, and for faculty members to conduct research.

And so where are we today? We're finalizing the technology infrastructure. So the physical infrastructure is complete. We're finalizing the technology infrastructure. We're outfitting it with smart technology throughout the home. We're working with Dena McDonough from the industrial design to complete the decor of the home space. We really want it to feel like a home so that we can simulate the experience that people would have in their own homes. And we'll be ready for collaboration in January of 2021.

Right now, we're hosting the inaugural Master of Science Degree in Health Technology students. So you can see in the picture, this is my colleague Nicole. I'll introduce you to her in just a moment. And our students, we were able to reconfigure the conference room so that they were the required six feet apart from each other.

And that's the next thing I would like to tell you a little bit about, is the Health Technology Education Program. Dr. Nicole Holtzclaw-Stone is the Assistant Director of the program with me. And I encourage you to visit our website as well, and learn more about what we're doing.

Let me just give you a little bit of background. If you think about-- we've talked about aging. But think about health care more broadly. There's a proliferation of health technologies being developed, not only in hospitals, but in our own homes, the different types of technologies that are available to support our health. But there is not enough workforce development of people who know about health and also know about human factors and that intersection, the importance of designing technologies for the users and understanding the users' capabilities and limitations.

And so we've been working very closely. This is our Health Technology Education Development team. So Jeff Woods, who's the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Applied Health Sciences, really is the lead on a lot of these efforts, working closely with Kesh Kesavadas. Their collaboration, Kesh is in engineering, really led to me coming to the University of Illinois. So they received an investment for growth proposal that allowed them to recruit a more senior person in this area. And so I came and we've been now working together, thinking about how to extend the educational opportunities in health technology.

So we have a number of other faculty and staff who are working with us from the College of Applied Health Sciences. We have Shannon Mejia, Tim Hale, and Harshal Mahajan. And then we also have folks from engineering. In addition to Kesh Kesavadas, we have R. S. Sreenivas and Abby Wooldridge. And so we've all been working closely together on this effort.

We also have an amazing advisory board. And so we have recruited people who represent small companies. So Tony Andre has his own Interface Analysis Associates, his own human factors firm, as well as big companies, Abbvie and Smiths Medical, State Farm, The American Medical Association, AARP. And then I'd also like to highlight that we have all three of the local health care agencies. So we have a Carle representative, we have Christie Clinic, and we also have OSF HealthCare.

The other thing I want to highlight is, all of these folks are University of Illinois alumni, the ones that I have circled. So they either have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or both from the University of Illinois. And they've just been so helpful in guiding our activities and our developments.

And so the primary home department of our Health Tech Education Program is Kinesiology and Community Health. Our primary partner is Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. But we also have agreements in place with these other departments in Engineering, mechanical, electrical, bio, as well as computer science. And we also very much engage the other two departments in our college, Speech and Hearing and Recreation Sport and Tourism.

So our efforts so far have been focused on a number of different things. I'm going to just highlight a couple. First has been the new Master of Science degree. And I'll tell you more about that in just a moment. We've also set up a new undergraduate certificate in Health Technology that is joint with Industrial Engineering. In the process, we developed a new course. Tim Hale is the lead instructor on this course. And it's an introductory-based health technology course. We're actually hoping to maybe get it to count for general education requirements, and draw students in from all majors across campus. And Tim will be offering this course online next semester.

Nicole and I are also in the process of developing an interdisciplinary minor in Health Technology, as well as a graduate certificate, digital badges, and then further in the future, we'll be continuing education and executive education programs.

Let me tell you just a little bit about the Master's Degree. This is a very unique program. We did some background market research, and there is no other program like this that exists. And what's unique is the combination of health and engineering. And so our students take a class in understanding users and human factors methods. But they also take a class in software engineering as well as hardware engineering. And so they're getting that mixture of understanding the people and understanding the technology. And then they also do a capstone project in the fall. They're linked with a particular capstone sponsor. They develop it further in the spring, and then they carry it out in the summer. So this is a one year, very intensive, professional Master's Degree. And we got it approved, and we got all of these new courses approved.

And we have students. This is our first class. We're very excited. Starting a new Master's Program in the middle of a pandemic was challenging. But we have six students, and they're doing very well.

And what I want to highlight is, they come from different backgrounds, which is what we expected. We have students with engineering backgrounds, information technology, psychology, community health, and anthropology. So we have them coming either from the more human behavior side or the more engineering side. And then they're all going to have this common knowledge of human factors and health care when they're done, and the engineering fundamentals in software and hardware.

So here they are, working in the LIFE Home. We've taught-- three of our core courses have met in the LIFE Home this semester. So it's been wonderful to have that resource available for hosting this class.

The current status of the Health Technology Education Program, and the Master's Degree in particular is, we're recruiting right now for next year's class. So we just opened up applications. We already have one accepted. So we had a student who had to defer from last year. And he wants to come next year. We're very excited about that. We have a deadline of March for full consideration of admissions and scholarships and fellowships. April 1st is for international students, and then we have a late deadline as well for domestic students. So I encourage you, if you know people who are interested in this particular topic, to set up a time to meet with Nicole. She's hosting information sessions. And we're eventually planning to have 30 students. So our goal this year was five. We had six, which was very exciting, as a way for us to just test out all of our procedures. Next year, we're hoping to have 10 to 12 students, and then ramp up to eventually host 30 students every year in this program.

I know I've talked about a lot of different things. And I just wanted to give you a flavor for some of the exciting things that are happening in our college in health technology. And so I will stop there and hopefully get the opportunity to answer questions from everybody.

And please do. My email is here, wendyr@illinois.edu. Don't hesitate to reach out if you want more information about anything. So I will stop sharing and Danielle will take over.

DANIELLE: Thank you so much, Wendy. There was so much information you shared there. I [INAUDIBLE] all of it. So we are going to give everyone the opportunity to ask Wendy anything you want right now. So let's see that Q&A box fill up. I see comments in the chat. Let's see what's coming in.

I have one question for you. As far as the technology that's currently out there for aging adults, Google and Amazon are two of the most widely known. Is one more friendly for aging adults or one that's more friendly with technology that's out there?

WENDY ROGERS: No, I don't think I would say one is more user friendly than the other. They both have a lot of potential benefits. One of the challenges though I think is, a lot of technology companies just don't tend to think about older adults as their target. And I think that's part of what we're trying to do, is to encourage them to think about them as potential users and provide more instructional support for people who might not have as much technology experience, to enable them to benefit from that technology. But I think they all have a lot of potential benefits that could serve older adults very well.

DANIELLE: Thank you. OK, and so we have a question. As a senior with senior friends who, after leading active lives-- I'm sorry. I think that they're trying to say-- who are leading active lives, now have cognitive challenges which prevents them from using computers to socially engage in webinars. How can I find out about the tablet, the tablet that you mentioned?

WENDY ROGERS: OK, that's a great question. So a couple of different things. So the Prism system is the tablet system that we developed. That is not yet commercially available. That is specifically for the research project. But we're hoping to make that commercially available in the future.

The other thing that I would mention, though, is the OneClick.chat project. That is commercially available. So if you go to the website OneClick.chat, and what they're doing, the company, they're wonderful people to work with. And because of the pandemic, they're offering free use of their system. And so it's so easy to use. We worked with them on the design to make it easy to use by older adults with and without cognitive impairment. So in that specific study, we are including older adults with cognitive impairment and making it easy for them to use. Please feel free to reach out to me and ask for more details, please.

DANIELLE: Wendy, what is your email again? Someone asked for it.

WENDY ROGERS: I saw that. I was just going-- wendyr@illinois.edu.

DANIELLE: OK. Here's a question in the chat box-- or Q&A. What positive or negative effects have your efforts encountered during the pandemic?

WENDY ROGERS: So good question. I think positive is really just the recognition of the importance of these kinds of questions and what we're doing. And the recognition that older adults are interested in using technology. There are these stereotypes that, oh, they're not going to want to use that. Not true, not true. And I think even older adults themselves are becoming more open to the idea of, hey, maybe I do want to try that thing of yours that might help me connect with my family or to engage with my community more.

In terms of the negative, I guess the challenge for us has been to continue to do our research. Normally, we would bring people to the LIFE Home where we have a CHART apartment at Clark-Lindsey Village. We've not been able to use those spaces. And so we're trying to continue to do our research like this over Zoom.

One of my students who's studying the social robot project that I mentioned, for her master's thesis, she mailed the participants the materials for the study. She set up a Zoom and did her research with them that way. So we're having to adapt. But I think everybody's doing a great job.

DANIELLE: Thank You. Here's another one. Envisioning a future of tech rich environments for older adults is wonderful. But how do we keep this from being accessible only to older adults with money?

WENDY ROGERS: Great question. And that is something that we're really, really focused on. We're doing a study right now in Chicago where we're working with a senior housing that, they don't even have internet access. And we're working with the electric company to get them internet access and then provide them with affordable tablets that they can use.

So part of it is engaging the communities to help provide these resources, internet access, broadband, that needs to reach out into the more rural areas. I just learned this. A lot of companies offer low income internet, very reduced prices. So thinking about that.

The other thing is, smartphones are becoming more and more accessible to a wide range of people. And so thinking about technology that can be delivered on the smartphone. And then, this question comes up a lot with respect to the robots. Those are probably expensive. And they probably are to start, but think about how those could be used in congregate housing and assisted living communities and so on. So the price per person wouldn't be as high.

And then the last thing is to think about, one of the benefits of our research is showing the value, showing the value for health outcomes. Then insurance or providers might be the ones who end up bearing the cost of some of these technologies.

DANIELLE: Great information. Thank you. Here is another one. What are the biggest challenges you and your team face going forward with your research efforts?

WENDY ROGERS: You know, I think one challenge is getting people involved. And so we want to make sure that the older adults who participate in our studies represent that broad range I showed you of people with different abilities and ethnicities and backgrounds. And so encouraging people to participate in research. I know one of the benefits of the University of Illinois is, in our community, people like to get engaged, but not everybody. So how can we brought in the involvement.

To that end, we're working closely with the Illinois Department on Aging and exploring some projects that will allow us to work with area agencies on aging and tapping into other counties throughout the state of Illinois so that more people can work with us. We've also been connecting with University of Illinois extension services. And so I think that's key, is to make sure we are reaching-- this relates to the last question, that we are reaching a broader range of people and understand their needs.

DANIELLE: Great. How about this? How do companies become a sponsor of one of the students' capstone projects?

WENDY ROGERS: Oh, great, great question. They reach out to me and I provide them with the materials. So we have a system in place. And if they're a company, there is a small fee associated with being a sponsor. And we're really excited about branching out. So they have to come up with an idea that is manageable with the student's timeline that they have. But we work closely with them to help develop that. So please get in touch with me. I'd be thrilled to talk more about that.

DANIELLE: Here's a question about the Health Technology Program. What has been the biggest takeaway that has popped up as you venture through the first semester with those students?

WENDY ROGERS: The challenge, it's a good question. We've learned a lot. We're always saying that. The challenge of having people with such different backgrounds be able to take the same courses. So the students who are coming from community health, psychology, anthropology, they're doing great in human factors and the users class, little more challenging in the software and hardware class, and vice versa. The students who are coming with engineering, they're doing great in the software and hardware class, little more challenging in the more behavioral science classes.

So our faculty are amazing trying to tailor the classes to the backgrounds and provide the support that they need. Because it's a level. And we want everybody at the end of this year to have that same base level of knowledge. But that's been a challenge.

DANIELLE: Here is a question that is very timely with the recent election. Has there been any interest in voting methods or technologies in the home or polling places to allow more of the elderly to participate?

WENDY ROGERS: Very good question. I do know of some of my colleagues who are working on the design of voting technology. So I was on a panel with some folks last month who were doing that, not specifically for older adults but in general, for individuals with eyesight difficulties or other kinds of impairments. But I like the idea of thinking about how to support individuals in the home to do this.

I know was struck-- my husband and I were struck by the ballot this year. It's complicated, you know? And how do we help make sure people really understand the information that's being conveyed and they're voting the way that they want to vote? I love that idea. I don't have any research in that space right now, but I think it's great.

DANIELLE: Lots of great comments coming in, great presentation, bravo, everyone enjoyed it. Here's another one. Using robots for the care of senior citizens is a really interesting concept. Where do you see things evolving in 5 or 10 years from now?

WENDY ROGERS: I really think we're going to start seeing more robots in homes sooner in the next few years. One of the things, I think, that's been a trend in this area is, I think at first, developers thought you needed one robot that could do everything like a butler or like you see on TV, Rosie the Robot and things of that nature, that does everything. And the trend has been more towards, let's think about more tailored robots. So the analogy I use is like an appliance, right? I don't expect my washing machine to wash my dishes. They have specific purposes. And I think we'll see the same thing with robots that have a specific purpose based on what the individual needs.

And that reduces the cost. You don't have to have a robot that's capable of doing everything. So I really do see this on the horizon. I do think we may start to see them more, as I mentioned, in independent living communities where multiple people might use the same robot. But our project with OSF that hopefully will get funded, we're thinking about how to put a robot in somebody's home while they're in the rehab phase. So they've had surgery, they've gone home, they get a robot for six weeks while they're in recovery, and then that same robot goes on to somebody else. So that's where I think we'll start to see more robots in the community.

DANIELLE: Thank you. It looks like I don't see any more questions. So I think we are done with Q&A. Is there anything else you want to share today, Wendy?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

WENDY ROGERS: I'm sorry?

DANIELLE: Any key takeaway that you want?

WENDY ROGERS: Well, I just appreciate all of the questions. And I joked with Danielle that I could talk all day, but she wouldn't let me. So I want to give you just more of an overview of the kinds of things that we're doing. But if anybody is interested in learning more, go to our website, send me an email. We're also happy to give presentations. I and my students and my postdocs, we give presentations to community groups. And so if there's a particular topic-- really did surface level. I didn't delve deep into any of the research topics. But that's certainly always an opportunity for the future. So thank you for your time, your interest, your questions. I really appreciate it.