OVERVIEW
MassAITC is hosting the Digital Frontiers in Frailty: Opportunities for Early Detection and Clinical Action Workshop. The free workshop will be held on January 23rd, 2026 at the Mount Ida Campus of UMass Amherst in Newton, MA and aims to bring together technologists (engineers, computer scientists, academic researchers, start-up founders) and clinicians (geriatricians, neurologists primary care providers) to redefine how we measure, assess, and provide time appropriate care for frailty. The workshop will include plenary speaker sessions from frailty and technology research experts, contributed poster and technology demo presentations, and a moderated discussion.
By 2060, it is estimated that nearly a quarter of the US population (over 95 million people) will be over the age of 65 and it is anticipated that a staggering 9.5 million older adults will be classified as frail — putting them at risk of adverse clinical outcomes, such as falls, hospitalizations, institutionalization, disability, and even mortality (Rubtsova 2019). With the rapid growth and adoption of wearables, home-based sensors, computer-vision systems, and powerful AI models, there is a large unmet opportunity to apply these technologies towards a digital, composite measure of frailty risk and now is the time to lay out the framework to act upon. To this end this workshop is to accelerate the development of a wholistic measurement measure of frailty, one that provides a more proactive opportunity for intervention by individuals (overall wellness and lifestyle factors) and more personalized health care from clinical providers to enable prevention of the progression of older adults to the more severe, i.e. irreversible stages of frailty.
SPEAKERS
We are excited to announce the current slate of speakers for the workshop!

Dae Hyun Kim
Associate Director & Senior Scientist, Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew Senior Life

Megan J. Huising-Scheetz
Associate Professor, Section of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, University of Chicago

Calum MacRae
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Deepak Ganesan
Professor of Computer Science, Manning CICS, UMass Amherst

Benjamin Marlin
Professor of Computer Science, Manning CICS, UMass Amherst
PROGRAM OUTLINE
Details for the Digital Frontiers in Frailty workshop program are provided below. The registration table will open promptly at 10:00am EST.
| Start | End | Session |
| 10:00am | 10:30am | Arrival & Check-in |
| 10:30am | 11:00am | Welcome and Opening Remarks#
|
| 11:00am | 11:30am | Session I: Towards Defining Frailty#
|
| 11:30am | Noon | Session II: Candidate Measures of Frailty for Digitization#
|
| Noon | 1:00pm | LUNCH |
| 1:00pm | 2:00pm | Posters & Device Demonstrations |
| 2:00pm | 2:30pm | Session III: New Frontiers in Measuring Functional Reserve#
|
| 2:30pm | 2:45pm | BREAK – Coffee and Snacks |
| 2:45pm | 3:55pm | Moderated Discussion: Towards Enabling a Wholistic Frailty Assessment#
|
| 3:55pm | 4:00pm | Closing Remarks# |
| 4:00pm | 5:00pm | Reception | Networking |
# Indicates Sessions that will be simulcast during the Zoom Webinar for remote attendees
WORKSHOP REGISTRATION - FREE
This hybrid format workshop is being provided free of charge by MassAITC. In-person attendees will experience the full program with lunch, coffee, and snacks provided. A subset of the worksop’s programs will also be available for remote attendees. When registering using the button below, we kindly request that you select the option for attendance that aligns with your plans as there are limited spots available for in-person attendees. If your plans change, please contact us as soon as possible.
Poster Presentation Submissions
Device Demo Submissions
The workshop is seeking posters from clinician scientists and researchers (academic and industry) focused broadly on Frailty Syndrome and Resilience from implementation of clinical diagnostic practices to the discovery of novel biomarkers.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Applications of AI & Technology to Frailty
- Epidemiology and Measurement
- Early life risk factors of frailty
- Measurement of pre-frailty
- Characterization of trajectory of frailty development or transitions between frailty states and their implications in clinical care including care transitions
- Frailty and other geriatric syndromes (e.g. Cognitive impairment, falls) and their unique and/or intersecting pathophysiology
- Novel biomarkers of pre-frailty/frailty and/or resilience
- Frailty and Clinical Care
- Frailty and comorbidity: distinguishing frailty and disease specific pathology
- Innovative clinical trials of interventions either targeting frailty and related biology or improving clinical and community care of pre-frail and frail older adults
We are accepting Poster Submissions on a rolling basis through Friday, January 9th.
The workshop is seeking device demonstrations from industry and academia alike. Demos should describe a technology or system that could be applied to measuring frailty and how it will be demonstrated at the workshop.
Technologies of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- earables
- implantables
- wearables
- ambient and remote sensing
- virtual and augmented reality
- integrated systems and platforms
- large language models (LLMs) and generative AI
We are accepting Device Demonstration Submissions on a rolling basis through Friday, January 9th.
IMPORTANT DATES
- Workshop: January 23rd, 2026
- Poster and Device Demo Submissions: Accepted on a rolling basis with a final acceptance date of submission on January 9th, 2026
VENUE DETAILS | PARKING | ACCOMMODATIONS
The MassAITC hosted “Digital Frontiers in Frailty: Opportunities for Early Detection and Clinical Action” workshop is being hosted at the UMass Amherst Mount Ida Campus located just outside of Boston. Included below are some helpful details about the venue including information regarding parking and directions from the nearest airport.
| Address | Mount Ida Campus of UMass Amherst |
| Website | https://www.umass.edu/mountidacampus/about |
| Telephone | 413-545-6223 |
| srataj@umass.edu |
Parking information:
There’s plenty of free parking available at the Mount Ida Campus close to the workshop venue in Wingate Hall. We recommend that attendees first look for parking in the Visitor Lot. If the Visitor Lot is full then attendees can look for additional parking along Shaw Road, Chapman, Tennis Courts and Malloy. Please do not park in the Wingate parking lot or along the North Loop Road to the Library. Please refer to this map for a detailed view of the campus.
Directions from Boston Logan International Airport:
HOTELS
While there are no formal hotel blocks for this single-day workshop, there are several options available within a two-mile radius of the venue.
| Address | Residence Inn by Marriott Boston Needham 80 B Street |
| Distance to venue | 1.6 miles |
| Website | https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/bosnh-residence-inn-boston-needham/overview/ |
| Address | Sheraton Boston Needham Hotel 100 Cabot Steet |
| Distance to venue | 1.7 miles |
| Website | https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/bossi-sheraton-boston-needham-hotel/overview/ |
| Address | Homewood Suites by Hilton Needham Boston 200 First Avenue |
| Distance to venue | 1.8 miles |
| Website | https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/bosnehw-homewood-suites-needham-boston/ |
CONTACT US: For questions regarding the workshop, please contact Suzanne Rataj at srataj@umass.edu
