The UMass Center for mHealth and Social Media will hold its first conference on Thursday, May 18. The conference will focus on how digital health is revolutionizing medicine.
The center is a cross-campus initiative devoted to research, education and training in mobile health and social media. The goal of the conference is to inspire individuals who are not regularly involved in digital research to learn how technology can be included in their work.
“There is an opportunity to improve patient care and enhance research by applying these new technologies,” said center co-founder Sherry Pagoto, PhD, professor of medicine in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine.
The center’s mission is to increase capacity for mHealth and social media research across campuses, facilitate industry–academic partnerships, become an international leader in the science of technology for health behavior change and establish UMMS as a leader in mHealth.
“To do that, we need to coalesce around the work we’re doing, collaborate with sister campuses and have a national presence,” Dr. Pagoto said.
The conference will feature speakers from the medical school who have applied digital health techniques in the field of emergency medicine, psychiatry, cardiology and preventive and behavioral medicine. Speakers from UMMS, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and UMass Amherst will also address how to design digital health solutions, use social media in research and discuss a new approach to developing wearable medical health monitors.
Additionally, a panel of experts will discuss the role of academia in pushing the field of digital health forward, including collaborating with industry.
The keynote address will be given by Gary G. Bennett, PhD, professor of psychology, global health and medicine with the Duke University, Global Health Institute, and will focus on treating obesity in primary care, digitally.
A collection of poster presentations will be on display and Recycle Health, a nonprofit organization founded by Tufts University faculty, will be collecting used activity trackers to be donated to people who can’t afford them, but would like to have one.
The event will be held in the faculty conference room from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on May 18. Registration is required.
