An Augmented Reality Portal for Community Health Workers
Project Description
Healthcare in the United States is costly, fragmented, and inequitable. Recent shifts have incentivized healthcare providers to work “at the top of their license”. This shift has advanced the role of Community Health Worker (CHW). CHWs are tasked with maintaining the health status of their community, often with limited training and resources. Even with the critical and growing importance CHWs play in enhancing population health, there are no information platforms serving their unique workflow. The underinvestment in digital health tools for CHWs is in stark contrast with advanced technologies such as augmented reality (AR), which are proliferating in healthcare settings. We propose to develop the framework for an augmented reality platform that will allow CHWs to observe, respond to, and plan for the health status of their community, including the status of individual community members, in real time. We will accomplish our goal through the following Aims:
● Aim 1: Create a synthetic dataset representing information collected and used throughout a
CHW’s workflow to use for application development.
● Aim 2: Develop a proof-of-concept data visualization application that can portray geolocated
healthcare information at both the community and individual level within a CHWs workflow.
● Aim 3: Engage UMBC DoIT staff to use protected health information (PHI) in new settings.
Researchers and Creators
Principle Investigators:
Ian Stockwell, Associate Professor, Department of Information Systems, UMBC
Lucy Wilson,
Past PI, Formerly Professor, Department of Emergency Health Services, UMBC,
Currently external collaborator, Health Officer and Director of Health and Human Services at Baltimore County Department of Health and Human Services
IRC Collaborator:
Anita Komlodi, Associate Director, IRC
Students
Sarthak Tavate, Graduate Student, Information Systems
Jose Del Toro Dominguez, Graduate Student, Public Policy
Funding
$22,000. 2024 Imaging Research Center, Faculty Research Fellowship awarded to PIs, Ian Stockwell and Lucy Wilson.