Smart Textile-Based Wearables

By Dianna Dinevski

NESTLED IN THE HEART OF Toronto’s medical and technical research community, you can find over 50+ exceptional researchers working on advancing smart textiles to improve healthcare for Canadians and hopefully many more around the world.

The breadth of research and innovation at Humber College coupled with Humber’s rising rankings in research partnerships has led to a ground-breaking collaboration with Canada’s University Health Network and other academic institutions. This is a testament to Humber’s commitment to continued partnership with a growing research community and propelling Humber’s innovation capacity.

The University Health Network (UHN) is the top-ranked research hospital in Canada, and under its rehab research arm, the KITE Research Institute, UHN is leading efforts to introduce a revolutionary new research platform into the medical research landscape. Together with seven other academic institutions— Humber College, The University of Toronto, Centennial College, George Brown College, OCAD University, Ryerson University and Sheridan College—UHN has formed the FIBRE (Fabric-BasedResearch) platform. One of the first of its kind, FIBRE also includes commercial and international partners, such as Vee Technologies Inc. (headquartered in New York, U.S., and Bangalore, India, with an office in Canada) and

SONA College of Technology (headquartered in Tamil Nadu, India). Together they are making a difference in the $13.5B medical wearables market and growing every day. The focus is to bring a human-centred design approach to improve accessibility and health for Canadians through smart textiles.

Some of the core research and technology development areas of the grant include:

Core 1 Material Synthesis and Characterization— develop, evaluate smart yarns & materials

Core 2 Bio-compatible Implant Design—use of yarns in biomedical & surgical applications

Core 3 Sensor & Actuator Fabrication—advanced manufacturing of smart textile components

Core 4 Design, Exploration and Product Development— inclusive design, assembly, testing

Core 5 Validation, Integration & Safety—validation in clinical settings

Core 6 Data Acquisition & Analytics—development of computing approaches

Together, the UHN FIBRE mission is “to make care accessible to people through technology by designing, introducing and integrating smart textiles across the healthcare system.”

—Bradly G. Wouters, PhD., Executive Vice President, Science and Research, University Health Network

The highly specialized multidisciplinary research team encompasses technical expertise needed to develop next generation smart textiles, including areas of biomedical sciences, engineering, industrial design, applied computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning, occupational health, rehabilitation medicine, signal processing and multi-sensory integration.

The UHN FIBRE partnership identifies potential research projects, pursues ideas to improve patient care which will result in increased safety for citizens and develops innovative products by designing, prototyping, testing, educating and commercializing advanced products. Several R&D projects will be funded through this initiative with an objective to improve the lives of people living with health-related challenges by creating products that will find commercial applications.

Humber was a natural technical partner with expertise in industrial design, advanced sensing and product design. The research team at Humber comprises Dennis Kappen, PhD., Maryam Davoudpour, PhD., George Paravantes as well as many more faculty members who are now getting involved.

Dennis is a professor of Industrial Design with the Faculty of Applied Sciences & Technology. He focuses on user experience design and human-centred innovation techniques within the realm of product design and technology applications. His research primarily focuses on the application of assistive technologies to motivate older adults to empower their physical, emotional and cognitive skills. He enjoys using Augmented Reality and Mixed-Reality systems for multi-modal interactions in semi-autonomous vehicle design. His co-authored work, with co-recipient George Paravantes, in AR, received the Humber President’s Research Excellence Award.

George Paravantes is with the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and teaches both user-experience design and interaction design with a focus on empathy towards behaviours and interaction with products and interaction services. George’s global experience allows him to understand the impacts of emerging technologies and their implications on people’s lives.

Maryam is a professor of Electronics with the Faculty of Applied Sciences & Technology. She is the newly elected and first female Chair of IEEE, Toronto Chapter. Founded in 1903, IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology, with 400,000 members in more than 160 countries. Maryam brings a wealth of experience as an electronics professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Technology at Humber, and declares, “Research is my life.”

These three leading professors are making a difference and continue to forge forward and advance research in wearable technologies.

Lastly, Dianna Dinevski is also part of the team as the Humber representative on the UHN FIBRE Steering Committee. Dianna is a Research Specialist, Grant & Business Development at Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation. She brings years of college research and business management experience to the Humber research team to bolster industry-academic partnerships to strengthen Canadian global competitive advantage.

For more information about UHN FIBRE at Humber, please contact Dianna at dianna.dinevski@humber.ca or Maryam Davoudpour maryam.davoudpour@humber.ca.

• Centennial College

• George Brown College

• Humber College

• OCAD University

• Ryerson University

• Sheridan

• University Health Network

• University of Toronto

• Vee Technologies

• SONA College of Technology