Morgan Price

Associate Professor

Research Classification

Health Information Systems
Design

Research Interests

family medicine
eHealth Adoption
eHealth Requirements Engineering
eHealth Ux/UI Design
software engineering
decision support systems
Treatment Adherence
Consumer eHealth
Health System Improvement
primary care
Team-based care

Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs

 
 

Research Methodology

Lead User Method
Pragmatic quasi-experimental studies
Patient Oriented Research
Usability Inspection / Testing
Mixed methods
action research
Design Research
User-centred Design

Recruitment

Master's students
Doctoral students
Postdoctoral Fellows
Any time / year round

Our lab is based in Victoria and connected to both the Island Medical Program and UVic Computer Science. We have a range of projects including: eHealth related projects connected to community based Electronic Medical record design and assessment of adoption; action research projects with partners related to health system improvement using EMRs in practice; consumer mHealth projects related to use of technology for patient reported outcomes in aging and in treatment adherence

I support public scholarship, e.g. through the Public Scholars Initiative, and am available to supervise students and Postdocs interested in collaborating with external partners as part of their research.
I support experiential learning experiences, such as internships and work placements, for my graduate students and Postdocs.
I am open to hosting Visiting International Research Students (non-degree, up to 12 months).
I am interested in hiring Co-op students for research placements.

Complete these steps before you reach out to a faculty member!

Check requirements
  • Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
  • Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
Focus your search
  • Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
  • Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
    • Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
    • Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
Make a good impression
  • Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
    • Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
    • Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
  • Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
  • Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
  • Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
    • Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
    • Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
  • Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
Attend an information session

G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.

 

ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS

These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.

Graduate Student Supervision

Doctoral Student Supervision

Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.

Documenting behaviour change processes and designing system improvements using the example of prescribing physical activity in primary care (2023)

Changing human behaviour is complex, especially in the context of chronic disease management; it can present challenges to patients, providers, and the entire healthcare system. This dissertation was guided by the sociotechnical systems approach. It adapted and applied multiple methodologies to explore behaviour change at different levels of chronic disease management, specifically: the Lead User Method, the Theory of Distributed Cognition, sociotechnical systems theory, the Theoretical Domains Framework, Personas, i* Framework, and the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1. Methods used within the dissertation included semi-structured co-creative interviews and a rapid prototyping and co-design process. A primary aim of the dissertation was to document existing practice and inform behaviour change challenges for physical activity prescription in primary care. A secondary aim of the dissertation was to explore a theoretical and methodological basis for behaviour change strategies for physical activity prescription in primary care.A novel method was developed and piloted offering a practical way of addressing behaviour change interventions in primary care settings and viewing behaviour change within primary care from a sociotechnical systems perspective. It also provided a way to document and inform improvements to the process for prescribing physical activity in primary care by using a visual approach to the discussion where lead users co-design potential solutions to identified problems. The system-level goal model and behaviour change technique clusters were created to inform the potential design of an information technology tool that would support behaviour change interventions in primary care aimed at increasing physical activity levels as a way to manage non-communicable diseases.Future work stemming from this research has the potential to address the complexity of human behaviour change from a sociotechnical systems perspective both within different settings of primary care and beyond the context of primary care.

View record

Designing user interface requirement patterns for a genomically enabled clinical decision support system using frailty assessment as a prototypical example (2020)

At present, the pervasive integration of genomics and other big data into routine clinical care has not been realized, particularly in primary care. One of the critical problems of personalized medicine is an effective and efficient presentation of large genomic data and evolving knowledge in a generalist clinical encounter setting. To address this issue, this study aimed to design and evaluate a user interface for a genomic clinical decision support system intended for primary care physicians. This was a serial, multiple-methods study. This study focused on frailty and the clinically actionable aspects of the frailty lifecycle, such as risk assessment. In phase one of this research, the Lead User method for the participatory design was used for the design of the user interface for genomically-enabled decision support. The concept ideation phase was followed by the design synthesis process in phase two. Phase two generated a set of system-agnostic and evidence-based requirement patterns and an integrated user interface design based on the patterns. In phase three, the integrated design was validated with Representative Users, and the patterns were refined. The key novel contributions of this work were user interface requirement patterns for genomically-enabled clinical decision support and a requirement integration method that supported the pattern development. The nineteen novel and validated requirement patterns are geared towards primary care providers as clinical users. The produced patterns addressed the presentation of CDSS notifications at the point-of-care and the display of detailed personalized risk information, including the risk factors and suggested interventions to address risk. These patterns are technology-agnostic and provide information to future implementers of clinical information systems. Producing theoretically-grounded and user-validated design patterns for presenting large evolving clinical data and knowledge, rather than a particular implementation, allows for this work to be relevant in various software-intensive clinical systems and contexts. Methodologically, the study contributed by developing a requirement integration method that is practical, reproducible, and applicable to a wide variety of design problems where it is necessary to synthesize multiple design perspectives. The method ensures traceability of requirement origin and evolution. It supports theory-informed design and triangulation of evidence.

View record

 

Membership Status

Member of G+PS
View explanation of statuses

Location

Vancouver Island - Victoria

Program Affiliations

 

If this is your researcher profile you can log in to the Faculty & Staff portal to update your details and provide recruitment preferences.

 
 

Read tips on applying, reference letters, statement of interest, reaching out to prospective supervisors, interviews and more in our Application Guide!