The Queen’s University School of Rehabilitation Therapy is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a speaker series. Elder care expert and Rhodes Scholar Samir Sinha presents his lecture The Potential Promise, Pitfalls and Peril of Mobile Technologies in Enabling Care for Our Ageing Population as the second event in the series.

With an ever growing interest around the potential for driverless cars, mobile technologies and general technology in our lives, Dr. Sinha’s lecture will explore some of the promising aspects that futurists tell us technology will deliver society and whether we can count on technology to hold the answers to finding better ways to care for the aging population.

He also examines what some of the early perils and pitfalls have taught us how much we don’t know and still need to know in supporting our ageing population.

“The answer to our everyday problems is increasingly receiving the response – ‘there’s an app for that!’ although we are quickly learning that the success of mobile technologies needs to start with understanding why and who we are designing them for,” says Dr. Sinha.

 “Dr. Sinha’s lecture will be of great interest to those engaged in a broad range of fields including health care delivery, administration, and policy development,” says Marcia Finlayson, director, School of Rehabilitation Therapy. “Celebration of the School’s 50th Anniversary has been a catalyst to bring voices such as Dr. Sinha’s to campus – this enables our school to contribute to the Queen’s and the broader Kingston communities in a unique and meaningful way.”

Dr. Sinha is the Director of Geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  He started his undergraduate studies in life sciences at Queen’s.

He is an international expert in the care of older adults and has consulted and advised governments and health care organizations around the world. Dr. Sinha is also the architect of the Government of Ontario’s Seniors Strategy. In 2014, Maclean’s proclaimed him to be one of Canada’s 50 most influential people and its most compelling voice for the elderly.

The seminar takes place Friday, March 31 at 4 pm in the Donald Gordon Centre, 421 Union Street. For more information visit the website.