The Oregon Center for Aging and Technology (ORCATECH) is multi-disciplinary organization that is transforming clinical research by developing and implementing leading-edge technologies that measure life's data in real time.

ORCATECH specializes in:

• Medical technology consultation, design and development
• Technology-based medical trial consultation and coordination, from focus groups to field-testing
• High-resolution data handling and analysis

History and milestones

ORCATECH has been designing its basic system, testing sensors and devices, writing the software to integrate its devices with its platform, and collaborating with other universities and industry since 2000.

A primary emphasis has long been to build concrete evidence to support ORCATECH’s unique and innovative approach to high-resolution data collection. Early projects set about identifying how the data we sense and collect relates to conventional measures, determining relevant user attitudes and beliefs, and most importantly, assessing the extent to which we can detect meaningful change over the long term. Over 80 publications address this work, and ongoing studies continue to explore this question.

Now we are at a point of targeted deployment: the need to take what we have learned and turn this into an approach that can make a difference. An initial focus for ORCATECH was one of our most vulnerable populations — those 800,000 people living alone in the U.S. with Alzheimer's Disease. This group has much to lose — their independence — and much to gain from a system that can help track important health changes without requiring copious and problematic medical visits.

As ORCATECH looks forward, it is clear that the sensor systems and devices developed and honed have applications across the medical industry, from passively assessing pain pre- and post-therapy, to developing advanced algorithms to parse large sets of medical data and more.