Sometimes, the most meaningful advances in technology are about enabling simple things which can have big impacts for a patient's quality of life. That’s what Dr. Jana Rieger has done. She’s invented a smart-enabled health tech device called Mobili-T that helps patients with something most of us probably take for granted - the ability to swallow. We talk about similarities in the creative process of research and writing a novel, how her research led to starting a company, why she chose to become an entrepreneur, how algorithms and machine learning plays into her work and why she feels “health at home” is the next big thing.

Find out more about True Angle and Mobili-T.

“I like having the open road, the null hypothesis...because you never know what you are going to find….Some of the best ideas come when you’ve left the research [itself] and are doing something else.” - Jana Rieger

Dr. Jana Rieger is a Professor in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine and Director of Research at the Institute for Reconstructive Sciences in Medicine at the University of Alberta. She’s also the CEO of Edmonton based True Angle Medical Technologies. Dr. Rieger is a global leader in functional outcomes assessment related to head and neck disorders. Over her 20-year career in this field, she has held roles as a professor, clinician, researcher, and most recently, entrepreneur.

Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
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