Project

The theme for course projects this year is Health Innovation.

Despite increasing interest in leveraging AI for healthcare, implementation remains challenging. In this project, students will engage with a variety of healthcare stakeholders -- clinicians (e.g., doctors, nurses, rehabilitation therapists), patient-facing or non-patient facing administrative staff, patients and patient advocates -- to discuss important values driving healthcare work, understand the current gaps in achieving these values, brainstorm use cases and implement AI solutions together.

Students will have opportunities to interact with representatives from 25-30 healthcare organizations. Some confirmed partners include: Waterloo Region Health Network, KidsAbility, Schlegel Villages, and 3 Ontario Health Teams (namely, KW4 OHT, Ottawa Valley OHT and Cambridge North Dumfries OHT) which together connects us to 100+ local community health organizations. Greenhouse, social impact incubator at University of Waterloo, will help facilitate the interaction between student teams and participating healthcare organizations.

From each team, the final products from this interdisciplinary capstone course is a functioning prototype that leverages AI to tackle a healthcare problem, and an integration plan that describes how such AI technology can be feasibly integrated into existing workflows and healthcare work environments.