Guy Dumont

Globally 5.6 million children die before they reach their fifth birthday, 2.5 million in the first month of life and 2.8 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone. It is estimated that 300, 000 women die during and following pregnancy and childbirth.  Almost all of these deaths occur in low-resource settings and most can be prevented. The Sustainable Development Goals have set ambitious targets to reduce these mortality rates by more than 50% by 2030.  Innovations in technology, health systems, financing and society have an enormous potential to reduce both maternal, newborn and child mortality.
The vision of the meeting is to push for change and innovative solutions to some of the world’s greatest health challenges. We are bringing together global leaders in maternal and child health including researchers, funders, policy makers, and other stakeholders to discuss, network and plan for moving the agenda forward. The sessions will feature key leaders involved in the implementation and evaluation of promising innovations in the African context.
The objective is to drive implementation of innovations for impact in reducing mortality in mothers and babies in low to middle income countries (LMICs).
https://impactnow.pwias.ubc.ca/

For parents of a sick baby, it can be hard to decide if and when it is the right time to go to hospital. In countries where healthcare resources are extremely limited, this can be a real challenge for primary health workers too, and this has major consequences with over 4 million infants who die of a major illness before their 28th day. Our goal for this study is to create the first version of a smartphone app that will measure critical vital signs in babies from video images, to provide users with information about how ill a baby is. Our long-term goal is to build a finalized smartphone app that can accurately interpret complex medical information to help parents and doctors make the right decisions about the need for urgent hospital treatment in sick babies.

While in residence at Peter Wall Institute, Guy Dumont will initiate the development of BrainSteer, a novel closed-loop transcranial electrical stimulation system with integrated sensors for feedback from personalized biomarkers of response to help personalize treatment for patients suffering from major depressive disorder.

MNCH Tech: A Workshop on Technology for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health
Principal Investigator, Dr. Guy Dumont, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UBC.

MobileKids – A smart game for keeping kids active
Principal Investigator: Dr. Guy Dumont, Faculty of Applied Science, UBC
Partner(s): Dr. J.P. Chanoine, Center for Healthy Weights Program, Shapedown BC project, BC Children’s Hospital
Physical inactivity is increasing among children around the world. This is directly linked to many health problems. MobileKids is a smart, mobile game that utilizes children’s interest in mobile technology and gaming, to increase physical activity. This game was developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia, and Ayogo Health Inc., with input from children and funding from the Peter Wall Solutions Initiative. The player can only play the game if s/he has earned points by being active. The game communicates wirelessly with a comfortably wearable activity monitor that records every step taken by the player at all times and transfers this information to the game, which converts steps into playtime and reward points. Preliminary testing has shown the effectiveness of this approach and the developers are now proposing to scale-up this game in select Vancouver schools and distribute it widely among children across British Columbia.

During his year at the Wall Institute, Dr. Dumont is focusing on global health, particularly on affordable technology for mobile health based on mobile phones for underdeveloped countries. Toward this goal, he and his collaborator at the BC Children’s Hospital have contributed $250,000 of their recently-awarded Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research In Science and Engineering to developing the Phone Oximeter. This device is a smartphone-based pulse oximeter for respiratory disease and management in the developing world. His aim is to make the Phone Oximeter universally available.

KidsCan: Involving Youth in Research to create Health solutions for improved youth health
Principal Investigator: Guy Dumont, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UBC
Partner Organization(s): Centre for Healthy Weights Program, BC Children’s Hospital, Children and Family Research Institute
Canadian youth are the fastest growing end-user group of mobile technology, yet their involvement in research and development of this technology is limited. This project will establish a youth engagement initiative (KidsCan) that directly involves youth as advisors and partners in the research and development of innovative mobile based solutions to health problems that face today’s youth. To showcase this novel idea we address the problem of childhood obesity, a major issue affecting our youth and society. With direct involvement of our youth partners in the design and evaluation processes, we are developing a smart phone application (MobileKids) that will help promote voluntary physical activity and healthy eating habits among youth. Along with interesting activities that require physical effort, the MobileKids application will include readily available nutritional information and interesting physiological data like heart and respiratory rates that can be used to generate peer support and interpersonal competition among young users to develop and adhere to healthy habits. In the long term, the KidsCan initiative will serve as a platform for development of more innovative solutions like MobileKids, while getting youth excited about science and research.

There is increasing recognition of the positive role that technology can play in improving the efficiency and reliability of health care delivery, particularly in the operating room. The impact of computer-integrated surgery will offer the surgeon the ability to carry out surgical intervention in a more accurate and less invasive manner. In a similar manner, automatic drug delivery systems based on accurate patient-specific models will allow anaesthesia with minimal drug usage and patient recovery time. Success will require fundamental understanding of physiological mechanisms, electro-physiology, biomechanics, and significant progress in robotics, signal processing and automation.
Prominent experts from automation, robotics and medicine, from North America and Europe, will be brought together to assess the research opportunities in the areas of medical devices fro general anaesthesia and surgical haptic interfaces. The challenges currently faced will be used as a basis for the preparation of a broadly based research proposal geared towards efficient and safe health care delivery.