In a large lab space known as the “motion capture room,” a Johns Hopkins Ph.D. engineering student is quite literally putting an older woman through her paces. Sixteen cameras are set up in pairs throughout the room, tracking the woman’s gait in real time as she walks across the room, and then moves through a series of exercises on a treadmill. The data collected is aimed at detecting factors — such as misaligned hips or hunched shoulders — that could impair the woman’s balance and put her at risk for a fall.
It’s Official!
The ribbon-cutting for the new Geriatrics Engineering @Johns Hopkins translational research hub took place on November 19, with many Johns Hopkins leaders — including Whiting School of Engineering Dean Ed Schlesinger and School of Medicine Dean/CEO Theodore DeWeese — in attendance.
Meanwhile, down the hallway, a Hopkins neurologist and an engineering professor lead a man in his 70s through a series of reading and writing exercises on a digitized notepad. An array of sensors tracks the movement of the man’s eyes, the cadence of his voice and the movement of his hand. The researchers will continue to assess the man’s reading and handwriting every few months. Their overarching goal: to detect neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s in their earliest — and most treatable — stages.
These two projects are just a few of many efforts that are unfolding — some now, others in the months and years to come — in a new hub for healthy aging research, which opened in July at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Campus under the umbrella of the CIM-supported Johns Hopkins Human Aging Project (HAP).
The 10,000-square-foot center, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, is bringing together faculty and students from engineering and medicine — as well as nursing, public health, and business — with older adults and their caregivers to test technology-driven solutions to some of the biggest challenges older adults face.
These include social isolation, mobility issues, and neurodegenerative decline, notes Najim Dehak, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering and co-director of the new hub. “Our aim,” he says, “is to leverage technology to extend the time that older adults can remain living safely and independently at home.” Dehak has even coined a term for this new area of translational research, which is reflected in the hub’s name: Geriatrics Engineering @Johns Hopkins.
“Our aim is to leverage technology to extend the time that older adults can remain living safely and independently at home.” – Najim Dehak
“The partnership between clinicians and engineers and other interdisciplinary scientists all coming together is transformative,” says geriatrician Cynthia Boyd, a Lavinia Currier CIM Scholar and director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, who has stepped in to shepherd the Human Aging Project after the passing of the HAP’s founding director, Jeremy Walston, a HAP Salisbury Family Scholar (see “In Memoriam”).
With its plentiful conference rooms, labs, and offices, as well as a model apartment that simulates a realistic living space of an older adult, the hub notably provides a new home for the Johns Hopkins Artificial Intelligence & Technology Collaboratory for Aging Research (AITC). Established in 2021 with $20 million in funding from the National Institute on Aging, the AITC currently has 129 pilot projects up and running. Developed by research teams at Johns Hopkins and universities and tech incubators around the country, some AITC projects have spawned prototypes that are already in market testing.
The goal with AITC projects and other research efforts unfolding in the new facility is to move innovations as quickly as possible into affordable solutions that seniors of all income levels can easily use, says geriatrician Peter Abadir, who co-directs the new facility. He notes that faculty and graduate students from Johns Hopkins’ Carey Business School are actively engaged on many projects to ensure that products can be marketed successfully and made widely available and affordable.
“We aren’t just building gadgets. We’re creating scalable solutions to meet older adults where they are — in their homes, or senior centers, or their doctor’s office,” says Abadir, Salisbury Family Foundation CIM/HAP Scholar. “We’re bringing engineers from the Homewood campus together with clinicians in East Baltimore to work shoulder by shoulder, quite literally, to design and validate technology that will help older adults live independently for longer, and with dignity.”
“We aren’t just building gadgets. We’re creating scalable solutions to meet older adults where they are — in their homes, or senior centers, or their doctor’s office.” – Peter Abadir
A focal point of Geriatrics Engineering @Johns Hopkins is the model apartment, which includes a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. While planners were still in the process of furnishing the living space in early fall, they are intent on creating a look and feel that is both comfortable and familiar for older adults and their caregivers — clutter and all.
“So much technology currently on the market is developed by testing it on young people, then reverse-engineered for older adults, and it’s developed in a sterile, studio-like setting,” says Abadir. “Here we are starting with older adults and determining their needs to make sure the technology we develop is relevant to them, in the places where they live.”
Dehak, a 2021 Whiting School of Engineering/HAP Scholar, concurs. “It’s so important for older adults to be included in the design of any new ‘smart home.’ They need to be a part of the conversation.” Toward that end, in the months ahead, both older adults and their caregivers will visit the model apartment to try out and provide feedback on the wearable trackers, robotic assistants and voice-activated systems that will be tested there.
Boyd notes that the Bayview campus is already the site of many well-established geriatrics-focused clinical programs and research centers, which will afford easy access to, and collaboration with, clinicians and their older patients and caregivers — thanks, in large part, to the ground-building work of Jeremy Walston.
“Jeremy took the lead in building a registry of older adults in the community who were interested in participating in studies aimed at healthy aging, many recruited through the Beacham Center for Geriatric Medicine,” she says.
She continues, “There is a long history at Bayview of aging research and geriatric clinical care — of working to support older adults living in our community — that is deep and profound and goes back decades. This hub is an exciting next step in partnership with Johns Hopkins clinicians, engineers and community members that will allow us to continue to advance the science and enable older adults to age as healthfully as possible.”
Ed Schlesinger, dean of the Whiting School of Engineering, has been an early and ongoing champion of the collaborative space. He says, “There is really no university today that is better equipped to lead in this area than Johns Hopkins. If anyone can do this, we can.”
