PRESENTER

      David Anderson is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Director of both the Precision Health and Bioinformatics Programs.  His interests include the intersection between molecular functions, biochemistry and evolution; basically, investigating the molecular mechanisms that underlie important evolutionary innovations. HIs focus is on the ways in which physical interactions between mutations at different sites (i.e. epistasis) govern the set of evolutionary pathways that are available to a given protein at a given point in its evolutionary history. To investigate this, he has developed a suite of different statistical analysis tools that estimate the effect of distinct mutations on a single quantitative function, which allows for the simultaneous assessment of potential molecular interactions between them.

GUEST PANELISTS

   Lawrence Richer MD, MSc (Clinical Epidemiology) is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta and practicing Pediatric Neurologist. He serves as the Vice-Dean Research (clinical) for the Faculty of Medicine and  Dentistry,  Center Director of the Northern Alberta Clinical Trials and Research Center (NACTRC), and academic lead for the Precision Health Signature Area. In his leadership roles, he is committed to maximizing the use of health data to improve patient outcomes through research and to enhancing support for innovation in clinical research. His research interests focus on the application of precision health in pediatric autonomic disorders and the treatment of pediatric migraine. He also holds the Alberta Health Services Chair in Health Informatics Research used to support the creation of the Real-World Evidence Unit and to enhance support for applications of data science in health.

    Randy Duguay is the CEO of Health Gauge, a company focused on providing people with the latest in Personal Health monitoring and management solutions using leading-edge wearable technologies and applications.  Randy is also serving as CEO of AI/ML Innovations Inc, the parent company of Health Gauge and which is investing in new innovations and solutions in applied AI/ML digital health solutions. Randy was an early employee and senior director at TELUS Health and played a lead role in commercializing several multi-million dollar digital health solutions at TELUS. Prior to that, Randy was involved in Smart Communities development in TELUS Communications, and as a Senior Project Manager in Stentor Canada. Randy has a B.Sc. (Electrical / Computer Engineering), an M.Eng. (Management), and has completed executive development programs at the University of Toronto, Rotman Business School. Randy also serves on the Advisory Board of ST Innovations at the University of Alberta, which is the business arm of the University of Alberta’s SMART Network.

  Christopher McCabe brings more than 25 years of experience as a health economist to his role with the organization. He trained and worked for 20 years in the UK before emigrating to Canada. During this time he held Full Professorships at the Universities of Sheffield, Warwick and Leeds. He was more recently a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Alberta, where he was appointed Capital Health Endowed Research Chair at the University of Alberta, leading two Genome Canada research groups focused on the evaluation, adoption and implementation of Precision Medicine technologies. He also served on the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health Care (CADTH) Health Economics Working Group, which authored the 4th Edition of the CADTH Guidelines for the Economic Evaluation of Health Technologies in 2017. He was lead author of the addendum to the CADTH Guidelines focused on co-dependent therapies, published in 2019. More recently Dr. McCabe advised the Patented Medicines Price Review Board on the technical issues related to the revision of their regulations for setting the price of new drugs in Canada. He is currently Chair of the Royal Society of Canada COVID Task Force Working Group on the Economy.