Hello SHIH Readers

The SHIH is pleased to announce that Margaret Tansey, our Chair, has been elected to the Ottawa Council on Aging Board of Directors effective June 2026.

As well, this email includes updates on Village Canada, Primary Care and our Technology Team is sharing a couple of opportunities for you to advance research science!  We hope you will find one or more of these updates interesting.

Village Canada – Calling Ottawa Seniors

The Village Canada Consortium (VCC) is seeking the help of older adult singles and couples in Ottawa!  As readers of these Updates are aware, we are proposing a non-profit, intergenerational, age-friendly village and we welcome your advice and ideas. Planned for the 23-acre hill site behind the RA Centre on Riverside Drive, this future community at 875 Heron Road would offer a new model of affordable living, care, and connection for older adults in Ottawa. The village could accommodate as many as 2000 people.

A full spectrum of housing from independent apartments to communal accommodation, to assisted living and to 24/7 care, is envisaged. The VCC is a growing group of community seniors’ groups, social and health services organizations, community institutions and associations.

This is how you can help us achieve this vision.  We want to assemble a list of people who might be interested in living there in future or who just want to be supportive of an important effort to provide more housing and care options, at affordable costs, to seniors in their Ottawa communities.

We will use the list from time to time to consult you on things such as housing design, unit sizes, price vs quality finishes, transportation preferences, green space design and gathering places and your eventual interests in accommodation rental or investment. This will be done through brief and simple questionnaires.

If you would like to contribute to this important community initiative, or may eventually have an interest in being involved or living there, please give us your contact information using this LINK. It will not be used for any purpose other than consultation on Village Canada.

The presentation at this LINK summarizes the project. Hope you can help.

Primary Care

Recently we learned that the Ontario Ministry of Health announced the successful applicants of the Round 2 funding to expand primary care in Ottawa. Round 2 was announced in September 2025 with proposals due mid November 2025.

Local primary care teams that received funding include Somerset West Community Health Centre, The Ottawa Hospital Academic Family Health Team, Pinecrest Queensway Community Health Centre, South Capital Family Health Team, l’Équipe de santé familiale académique Montfort, Bruyere Health Academic Family Medicine and Rideau Family Health Team. These teams will establish a process to accept new patients and will communicate this to the local community. Click HERE for the complete press release.

The Ministry of Health has not yet announced the date for the next round of submissions.

We continue to advocate for primary care for older adults with several local health care organizations.

Need Primary Care: Get Connected

As a reminder, if you don’t have primary care, be sure to register on Health Care Connect by either using this link or phone 811.

Many of you have been on the list for years without success. However, Ontario Health is using this information to connect Ontarians to new primary care teams.

Technology

Carleton University has contacted us concerning two different projects that require volunteer participants. Please read the emails below from the researchers for their detailed descriptions.

Caregiver Feedback on Care Related Digital Signature

Our names are Rahma Wardak and Anupriya Kakkar, and we are research assistants at the Bruyère Health Research Institute. We are working on a research project under the supervision of Dr. Neil Thomas, who is a physician in Bruyère Health’s Memory Clinic.

We are writing to you today to invite you to participate in a study entitled “Caregiver feedback on care related digital signature”. This study aims to determine if data collected from a home technology platform could be used to detect care partner burden levels.

We placed sensors in people’s homes a few years ago and then used artificial intelligence to analyze the data and develop a model to predict the level of caregiver burden. We wish to ask caregivers of people living with dementia what they think about this work.

With your consent, you would be asked to participate in a 1-hour interview, held over Zoom or in-person at the Bruyère Health Market Site Hospital. The interview would include questions about your thoughts of the artificial intelligence model, and if you think that this type of information from home sensors would be useful to you as a care partner.

Prior to the interview, you will be asked demographic questions like age and sex, questions about whether you have experience with home technology platforms and your experience with home sensors and smart home technologies.

For your participation in the interview, you will be compensated with a gift card.

This study has been reviewed and approved by the Bruyère Health Research Ethics Board as study # M16-25-006. If you have any ethical concerns about the study, or the way it is conducted, please contact the Bruyère Health REB: REB@bruyere.org

If you would like to participate in this research project, or have any questions about the research, please contact us at memoryresearch@bruyere.org.

Technology to Provide Older Adult Safety and Independence 

My name is Eliana Schartner, and I am a research assistant in the department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University. I am working on a research project under the supervision of Prof. Bruce Wallace.

I am writing to you today to invite you to participate in a study entitled Technology to Provide Older Adult Safety and Independence. To participate in this study, you must be 18 years or older. This study aims to gather input and explore the user experience of a low power wearable wandering safety device and its companion web application.

Exclusion Criteria: Individuals under 18 and those with physical conditions that may prevent them from handling and testing a wrist-worn device. Any participants with a diagnosis of Dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease and no longer their own decision maker.

With your consent, you would be asked to participate in a 60 to 90 minute focus group held in person on the Carleton campus in the ARISE building, or online through Zoom, with up to 9 other participants. You will be asked for your availability to ensure the study is held during a time that works for all participants. The focus group will showcase a wearable wandering safety device that participants will be asked to try on and inspect. Participants will also have the opportunity to interact with the companion web application. We will ask for your thoughts and feedback on the application and device design. The research team will use this feedback in the developmental process to refine the product hardware and software to maximize usability and user experience.

There are no risks associated with participating in this study. The research team will take reasonable steps to protect your identity and privacy. This will be done by anonymizing all responses and allowing you to request that certain responses not be included in the final project. If you withdraw from the study, all information provided from you will continue to be included unless you request to have your participation removed prior to the data anonymization. Please note that because this study takes place in a focus group, confidentiality cannot be guaranteed by other participants.

As a token of appreciation, I will be providing you with a $20 Tim Hortons gift card. The compensation is yours to keep, even if you choose to withdraw. If public transportation or other methods of transportation are required for the participant to go to campus, their transportation fees will be covered. You will need to provide a receipt for transportation reimbursement.

All research data will be stored securely. Digital data, including any notes, will be password-protected and stored in Carleton data centers. Any hard copies of data including any handwritten notes will be kept in a locked cabinet at Carleton University. Research data will only be accessible by the research team and the research supervisor.

This research has been cleared by Carleton University Research Ethics Board B, Clearance #125606.

Should you have any ethical concerns with the study, please contact the REB Chair, Carleton University Research Ethics Board-B by email: ethics@carleton.ca. For all other questions about the study, please contact the researcher.

If you would like to participate in this research project, or have any questions about the research, please contact me at elianaschartner@cmail.carleton.ca or my colleague Tom Sloan (thomassloan@cmail.carleton.ca).

Signing off for now

On behalf of the Seniors Health Innovations Hub, we wish you the very best for the summer.

We hope you found this Update informative.  We’d appreciate hearing from you or if you have ideas to share, please contact us using this Form.

Margaret Tansey (Chair)

Anna Cuylits

Carolyn Inch

Patricia Eakins

Peter Heyck

Terrance Hunsley