Daniel He is a second-year electrical engineering student, but he also has an interest in healthcare – specifically areas that he thinks most people don’t pay enough attention to.
He is the chair of FREDTalks, an annual lecture series at UNB that’s focusing on innovations in healthcare this year. The event is set to take place on Thursday, February 25 at UNB’s Wu Conference Centre.
“Pretty much the majority of people in the faculty of science want to enter medical school, but they don’t really look into other options…so this year I decided to make the theme around healthcare. I thought we’d be able to get a much larger audience [than last year]” said He.
FREDTalks started last year, but wasn’t a sellout event according to He. This year the event sold out in under 24 hours, with more tickets being added later, as well as 10 being given away to the Facebook event’s followers.
“Right now, I’m just hoping people won’t try and get in without a ticket. We’re still getting messages everyday like ‘Hey, I wasn’t able to get a ticket, could I still go?’ and such.”
The speakers at the event are UNB Fredericton’s Dr. Chris McGibbon, whose specialty is in rehabilitation biomechanics, CEO/Founder of Populus Global Solutions Tristan Rutter and Alireza Manashty, a PhD candidate from UNB Saint John.
He said there’s a need for more innovation in healthcare, things like Populus’s data-driven software that has been recognized by the World Health Organization as effective in reducing hypertension-related complications.
Topics will range from McGibbon’s focus on robotic exoskeletons, integrated healthcare solutions and Manashty’s cloud-like syncing of health monitoring systems to detect anomalies in patients’ well being.
He says Canada is among the leading nations for Biomechanical engineering research, and attributes that to some of the event’s surge in popularity.
“It’s a booming field, so it’s quite interesting given all the startups around it,” said He.
