The Oregon Roybal Center for Aging, Technology, Education and Community Health (""""""""ORCATECH"""""""") is dedicated to: 1) Creating and supporting an infrastructure that will enhance the process of developing and translating basic social, behavioral and biological knowledge about aging independently using state of the art technology and engineering; 2) Establishing a use-inspired living laboratory for technology-based health monitoring and support of independent aging, utilizing unique study sites in the community consisting of individual residences and communities together with advances in ubiquitous computing and; 3) Accelerating the process of development and translation of knowledge gained in this living laboratory through innovative public-private partnerships, cross-disciplinary collaborations and recruitment of new talent into the field. This Center fosters and stimulates translational innovation though a number of mechanisms such as the creation of a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional Council composed of academic, community and industry leaders and establishing a network of retired industry based engineers and health providers for participatory design development. The Center establishes a living laboratory infrastructure or network of residences including a unique senior community prospectively designed from the ground up and outfitted for unobtrusive monitoring of activity with cutting edge technology amenable to iterative modification. Device and system dissemination and adoption will be facilitated by application of industry-based product development acceleration techniques. A pilot grant program will provide a further mechanism for generating needed new knowledge, recruiting new investigators into the field and enabling more definitive studies to be conducted. Initial pilots will address a breadth of key topics including prototype development of home computer monitoring systems of cognitive function, algorithmic techniques for inferring outcomes from continuous activity data and identifying monitoring needs and optimal communication channels for older people and their family.
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