ARiEAL Researchers, Drs. John Connolly, Jim Reilly and Ranil Sonnadara, together with their colleagues and student received funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) through its Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered) program to develop a point of care system for automated coma prognosis. The research team comprises scientists and clinicians from neuroscience, engineering, and health sciences, and also includes Dr. Alison Fox-Robichaud (McMaster University; Hamilton Health Sciences), Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes (McGill University), Dr. Lydia Timm (Brain Vision Solutions, Canada), Dr. Cindy Hamielec (Hamilton Health Sciences), and Rober Boshra (McMaster University).

The Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered) program supports innovative, interdisciplinary, collaborative research projects, requiring participation from the natural sciences or engineering community together with the health sciences community.The CHRP program also requires the translation of the research results to knowledge/technology users (KTUs) and related stakeholders outside the academic or training environment.

Coma is a state of unconsciousness with a variety of causes, and the research team is proposing an innovative approach to apply machine learning methods to develop an inexpensive point of care system that can significantly improve the accuracy of coma prognosis. The proposed project highly aligned with ARiEAL’s interdisciplinary approach. We are extremely proud of Dr. Connolly and the team!