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Professor Carolyn McGregor AM

ADVANCE TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AWARD WINNER 2015


Carolyn McGregor is the Dean of the Faculty of Business and IT and an alumni Canada Research Chair based at Ontario Tech University. She is the Founding Director of the Joint Research Centre in Artificial Intelligence for Health and Wellness between Ontario Tech University and University of Technology, Sydney. She is an expert creating techniques to find patterns in numbers. Carolyn’s research provides doctors with new ways to save the lives of premature babies, and uses her innovative techniques to do so.

Her research utilises big data, where she captures information and numbers that monitor conditions of babies born premature, and devise techniques to monitor their ongoing health states. The same research is also monitoring the health states of astronauts, tactical operators and firefighters where by using big data and artificial intelligence, can address and potentially predict physical and mental medical problems

Having established a career designing and building executive information systems, Professor McGregor AM was pursuing her PhD in the field when she met a neonatologist, who was looking to harness bedside data in neonatal intensive care units. For her, it was a fascinating opportunity to apply her skills for the betterment of society. In 2005, she established the health informatics research program at the University of Western Sydney (now Western Sydney University), and with it the foundations of the Artemis Project – a sophisticated health analytics platform enabling real-time analysis of multiple data streams. This enhanced ability to detect patterns can mean earlier detection of disease and infection, and reduced mortality.

In 2007 she moved from Australia to Canada after she was awarded a coveted Canada Research Chair in the domain of Health Informatics and she has lived in Toronto since then.

Professor McGregor is now working with NASA, the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems and the Canadian Space Agency to adapt Artemis to manage the health of astronauts for future long range missions beyond low earth orbit. She is demonstrating how the Artemis platform can monitor physiological reaction and adaption throughout the mission, and give the astronauts tools to self-monitor during the long periods that the spacecraft will be out of contact with mission control. She has been demonstrating how to use these techniques to assess resilience and adaption in firefighters and tactical operators and to assess the ability of military personnel to acclimate to extreme climates using the climatic chambers at Ontario Tech University where she is now based in Canada.

Widely acknowledged as a world-leading disruptive innovator and expert in the field of health informatics, Professor McGregor was awarded the Advance Global Australian Award for Technology Innovation in September 2015, and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2014. In 2017 she was featured in the 150 Stories series commissioned by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and the Government of Canada to commemorate the 150th year anniversary of Ontario and Canada. In 2018 she was recognised as a Woman Leader in Digital Health in Canada.

“Winning the Advance Tech Innovation Award has allowed me to build a professional network in Australia and give back to my country. Today, I am collaborating with UTS and WA Health on ground-breaking technology applications using my global expertise and IP, thanks to Advance.” – Professor Carolyn McGregor, Advance Award Winner 2015

Meet Carolyn McGregor AM, the 2015 Advance Global Australian Technology Innovation Award Winner. Watch a masterclass with Carolyn on ‘Disrupting Healthcare with Big Data on Earth and in Space’ at the 2015 Advance Global Australian Summit and her 2015 Advance Global Australian Award Acceptance Speech below.


Winner of the Advance Technology Innovation Award 2018
> Disrupting Healthcare with Big Data on Earth and in Space – Advance Global Australian Masterclass | Watch
> Advance Global Australian Technology Innovation Award acceptance Speech | Watch
> Meet Carolyn McGregor AM | Watch

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