Bio

Avis Favaro is an acclaimed medical journalist with decades of experience uncovering and reporting health stories that matter to Canadians.

Favaro was Canada’s longest-serving television Medical Correspondent, with CTV News. She is currently a host of The CHIP -a podcast by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and is also a senior advisor with Santis Health. Favaro has been recognized with a multitude of awards, along with an honorary PhD from McMaster University.

She is also among the large cohort of aging Canadians, and so this conference is - in her words - "a perfect fit!"

Augmented Human

Wearable technologies are transforming healthcare, rehabilitation, and aging, pushing past traditional boundaries to unlock new dimensions of human potential. Drawing from the groundbreaking insights in Dr. Helen Papagiannis’s best-selling book “Augmented Human,” this keynote will delve into how AI and AR-powered innovations are breaking barriers to accessibility and reimagining the human experience, offering an inspiring vision for living and thriving at every stage of life.

Bio

Dr. Helen Papagiannis is a globally recognized thought leader in immersive technologies, specializing in AI and spatial computing and their transformative impact on industries. She is a bestselling author of Augmented Human: How Technology is Shaping the New Reality; the founder of XR GOES POP, a consulting firm focused on experiential retail, luxury lifestyle, and popular culture; and she has spoken at such leading conferences as TEDx, SXSW, and AWE. Her TEDx talk is celebrated as one of the top 10 talks on augmented reality and gamified life.

Strategies for Restoring Function after Spinal Cord Injury

Neuroprosthetic devices have tremendous potential to improve quality of life after spinal cord injury. A promising method for restoring movement and enhancing rehabilitation is transcutaneous stimulation of the spinal cord. Transcutaneous stimulation can activate neural circuits distal to an injury, leading to both enhanced rehabilitation, and facilitating long-term neuroplasticity and recovery that restores volitional control of movement for months after the stimulation is discontinued. This technology is recently FDA approved for improving hand strength and sensation after spinal cord injury, with many other indications currently under study in our laboratory.

Bio

Dr. Chet Moritz is the Hwang Endowed Professor in the department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, with joint appointments in Rehabilitation Medicine and Physiology & Biophysics. He was named an Allen Distinguished Investigator and appointed to the Christopher & Dana Reeve International Consortium on Spinal Cord Repair.

Dr. Moritz serves as the Co-Director for the Center for Neurotechnology, a former NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC). He directs the Restorative Technologies Laboratory (RTL) which focuses on developing technologies to treat paralysis due to spinal cord injury. He recently co-led a multi-site clinical trial of spinal stimulation to restore hand function for people with spinal cord injury leading to FDA approval. He and his team are currently studying spinal stimulation to improve walking after spinal cord injury and for children with cerebral palsy, as well as optogenetic stimulation to guide neuroplasticity and recovery in the injured spinal cord of animals.

The Mirage of Universality: Building a More Equitable and Resilient Health System

This presentation will review the state of inequities in Canada’s health care system and broader notions of health, examine structural discrimination as a key driver of health disparities, and discuss interventions and strategies to improve health equity and health system resilience.

Bio

Dr. Andrew Boozary is a primary care physician, policy practitioner, researcher, and founding executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at the University Health Network. He completed his medical training at the University of Toronto and health policy training at Princeton University and Harvard University. His work at the intersection of health policy, social justice and equitable health care delivery aims to improve health outcomes for marginalized populations.

During the pandemic, Dr. Boozary served as co-lead of the Ontario Health Toronto Region COVID-19 Homelessness Response and holds the Dalla Lana Professorship in Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto. He is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Public Health Review and served in senior advisory roles for policymakers at various levels of government both nationally and abroad on public policy issues ranging from primary care reform to the implementation of pharmacare.

Dr. Boozary has published in high-impact academic journals, and his writing and analysis appear in print and broadcast media. He has been the recipient of a number of national and international awards, and is the youngest physician recipient of the Louise Lemieux-Charles Health System Leadership Award and the youngest Convocation speaker for the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine.