Bücher der Reihe Synthesis Lectures on Assistive, Rehabilitative, and Health-Preserving Technologies

Stroke and spinal cord injury often result in paralysis with serious negative consequences to the independence and quality of life of those who sustain them. For these individuals, rehabilitation provides the means to regain lost function. Rehabilitation following neurological injuries has undergone revolutionary changes, enriched by neuroplasticity. Neuroplastic-based interventions enhance the efficacy and continue to guide the development of new rehabilitation strategies. This book presents three important technology-based rehabilitation interventions that follow the concepts of neuroplasticity. The book also discusses clinical results related to their efficacy. These interventions are: functional electrical stimulation therapy, which produces coordinated muscle contractions allowing people with paralysis to perform functional movements with rich sensory feedback; robot-assisted therapy, which uses robots to assist, resist, and guide movements with increased intensity while also reducing the physical burden on therapists; and brain¿computer interfaces, which make it possible to verify the presence of motor-related brain activity during rehabilitation. Further, the book presents the combined use of these three technologies to illustrate some of the emerging approaches to the neurorehabilitation of voluntary movement. The authors share their practical experiences obtained during the development and clinical testing of functional electrical stimulation therapy controlled by a brain¿computer interface as an intervention to restore reaching and grasping.

This book describes an overlooked solution to a long-standing problem in health care. The problem is an informational supply chain that is unnecessarily dependent on the minds of doctors for assembling patient data and medical knowledge in clinical decision making. That supply chain function is more than the human mind can deliver. Yet, dependence on the mind is built into the traditional role of doctors, who are educated and licensed to rely heavily on personal knowledge and judgment. The culture of medicine has long been in denial of this problem, even now that health information technology is increasingly used, and even as artificial intelligence (AI) tools are emerging. AI will play an important role, but it is not a solution. The solution instead begins with traditional software techniques designed to integrate novel functionality for clinical decision support and electronic health record (EHR) tools. That functionality implements high standards of care for managing health information. This book describes that functionality in some detail. This description is intended in part to be a starting point for developers in the open source software community, who have an opportunity to begin developing an integrated, cloud-based version of the tools described, working with interested clinicians, patients, and others. The tools grew out of work beginning more than six decades ago, when this book¿s lead author (deceased) originated problem lists and structured notes in medical records. The electronic tools he later developed led him to reconceive education and licensure for doctors and other health professionals, which are also part of the solution this book describes.

Demographic trends and increasing support costs means that good design for older and disabled people is an economic necessity, as well as a moral imperative. Alan Newell has been described as "e;a visionary who stretches the imagination of all of us"e; and "e;truly ahead of his time."e; This monograph describes research ranging from developing communication systems for non-speaking and hearing-impaired people to technology to support older people, and addresses the particular challenges older people have with much modern technology. Alan recounts the insights gained from this research journey, and recommends a philosophy, and design practices, to reduce the "e;Digital Divide"e; between users of information technology and those who are excluded by the poor design of many current systems. How to create and lead interdisciplinary teams, and the practical and ethical challenges of working in clinically related fields are discussed. The concepts of "e;Ordinary and Extra-ordinary HCI"e;, "e;User Sensitive Inclusive Design"e; , and "e;Design for Dynamic Diversity"e;, and the use of "e;Creative Design"e; techniques are suggested as extensions of "e;User Centered"e; and "e;Universal Design."e; Also described are the use of professional theatre and other methods for raising designers' awareness of the challenges faced by older and disabled people, ways of engaging with these groups, and of ascertaining what they "e;want"e; rather than just what they "e;need."e;This monograph will give all Human Computer Interaction (HCI) practitioners and designers of both mainstream and specialized IT equipment much food for thought. Table of Contents: 40 years--Highlights and a Brief Review / Communication Systems for Non-Speaking and Hearing-Impaired People / TV Subtitling for Hearing-Impaired People / Word Prediction for Non-Speaking People and Systems for those with Dyslexia / Providing Reusable Conversation for Non-Speaking People / Story Telling and Emotion in Synthetic Speech / Lessons Learned from Designing AAC Devices / IT Systems for Older People / Designing IT Systems for Older People / Ordinary and Extra-Ordinary Human Computer Interaction / User Sensitive Inclusive Design / The Use of Professional Theatre / Attacking the Digital Divide

Computer software has been productive in helping individuals with cognitive disabilities. Personalizing the user interface is an important strategy in designing software for these users, because of the barriers created by conventional user interfaces for the cognitively disabled. Cognitive assistive technology (CAT) has typically been used to provide help with everyday activities, outside of cognitive rehabilitation therapy. This book describes a quarter century of computing R&D at the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics, focusing on the needs of individuals with cognitive disabilities from brain injury. Models and methods from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) have been particularly valuable, initially in illuminating those needs. Subsequently HCI methods have expanded CAT to be powerful rehabilitation therapy tools, restoring some damaged cognitive abilities which have resisted conventional therapy. Patient-Centered Design (PCD) emerged as a design methodology which incorporates both clinical and technical factors. PCD also takes advantage of the patient's ability to redesign and refine the user interface, and to achieve a very good fit between user and system. Cognitive Prosthetics Telerehabilitation is a powerful therapy modality. Essential characteristics are delivering service to patients in their own home, having the patient's priority activities be the focus of therapy, using cognitive prosthetic software which applies Patient Centered Design, and videoconferencing with a workspace shared between therapist and patient. Cognitive Prosthetics Telerehabilitation has a rich set of advantages for the many stakeholders involved with brain injury rehabilitation.

Designed Technologies for Healthy Aging identifies and presents a variety of contemporary technologies to support older adults' abilities to perform everyday activities. Efforts of industry, laboratories, and learning institutions are documented under four major categories: social connections, independent self care, healthy home and active lifestyle. The book contains well-documented and illustrative recent examples of designed technologies-ranging from wearable devices, to mobile applications, to assistive robots- on the broad areas of design and computation, including industrial design, interaction design, graphic design, human-computer interaction, software engineering, and artificial intelligence.

Approximately 10% of North Americans have some communication disorder. These can be physical as in cerebral palsy and Parkinson's disease, cognitive as in Alzheimer's disease and dementia generally, or both physical and cognitive as in stroke. In fact, deteriorations in language are often the early hallmarks of broader diseases associated with older age, which is especially relevant since aging populations across many nations will result in a drastic increase in the prevalence of these types of disorders. A significant change to how healthcare is administered, brought on by these aging populations, will increase the workload of speech-language pathologists, therapists, and caregivers who are often already overloaded. Fortunately, modern speech technology, such as automatic speech recognition, has matured to the point where it can now have a profound positive impact on the lives of millions of people living with various types of disorders. This book serves as a common ground for two communities: clinical linguists (e.g., speech-language pathologists) and technologists (e.g., computer scientists). This book examines the neurological and physical causes of several speech disorders and their clinical effects, and demonstrates how modern technology can be used in practice to manage those effects and improve one's quality of life. This book is intended for a broad audience, from undergraduates to more senior researchers, as well as to users of these technologies and their therapists.

Within the context of healthcare, there has been a long-standing interest in understanding the posture and movement of the human body. Gait analysis work over the years has looked to articulate the patterns and parameters of this movement both for a normal healthy body and in a range of movement-based disorders. In recent years, these efforts to understand the moving body have been transformed by significant advances in sensing technologies and computational analysis techniques all offering new ways for the moving body to be tracked, measured, and interpreted. While much of this work has been largely research focused, as the field matures, we are seeing more shifts into clinical practice. As a consequence, there is an increasing need to understand these sensing technologies over and above the specific capabilities to track, measure, and infer patterns of movement in themselves. Rather, there is an imperative to understand how the material form of these technologies enables them also to be situated in everyday healthcare contexts and practices. There are significant mutually interdependent ties between the fundamental characteristics and assumptions of these technologies and the configurations of everyday collaborative practices that are possible them. Our attention then must look to social, clinical, and technical relations pertaining to these various body technologies that may play out in particular ways across a range of different healthcare contexts and stakeholders. Our aim in this book is to explore these issues with key examples illustrating how social contexts of use relate to the properties and assumptions bound up in particular choices of body-tracking technology. We do this through a focus on three core application areas in healthcare-assessment, rehabilitation, and surgical interaction-and recent efforts to apply body-tracking technologies to them.

Assistive Technology Design for Intelligence Augmentation presents a series of frameworks, perspectives, and design guidelines drawn from disciplines spanning urban design, artificial intelligence, sociology, and new forms of collaborative work, as well as the author's experience in designing systems for people with cognitive disabilities. Many of the topics explored came from the author's graduate studies at the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design, part of the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The members of the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design came from a wide range of design perspectives including computer science, molecular biology, journalism, architecture, assistive technology (AT), urban design, sociology, and psychology. The main emphasis of this book is to provide leverage for understanding the problems that the AT designer faces rather than facilitating the design process itself. Looking at the designer's task with these lenses often changes the nature of the problem to be solved. The main body of this book consists of a series of short chapters describing a particular approach, its applicability and relevance to design for intelligence augmentation in complex computationally supported systems, and examples in research and the marketplace. The final part of the book consists of listing source documents for each of the topics and a reading list for further exploration. This book provides an introduction to perspectives and frameworks that are not commonly taught in presentations of AT design which may also provide valuable design insights to general human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work researchers and practitioners.

Have you ever experienced the burden of an adverse event or a near-miss in healthcare and wished there was a way to mitigate it? This book walks you through a classic adverse event as a case study and shows you how.It is a practical guide to continuously improving your healthcare environment, processes, tools, and ultimate outcomes, through the discipline of human factors. Using this book, you as a healthcare professional can improve patient safety and quality of care.Adverse events are a major concern in healthcare today. As the complexity of healthcare increases-with technological advances and information overload-the field of human factors offers practical approaches to understand the situation, mitigate risk, and improve outcomes.The first part of this book presents a human factors conceptual framework, and the second part offers a systematic, pragmatic approach. Both the framework and the approach are employed to analyze and understand healthcare situations, both proactively-for constant improvement-and reactively-learning from adverse events.This book guides healthcare professionals through the process of mapping the environmental and human factors; assessing them in relation to the tasks each person performs; recognizing how gaps in the fit between human capabilities and the demands of the task in the environment have a ripple effect that increases risk; and drawing conclusions about what types of changes facilitate improvement and mitigate risk, thereby contributing to improved healthcare outcomes.

This book introduces zero-effort technologies (ZETs), an emerging class of technologies that require little or no effort from the people who use them. ZETs use advanced computing techniques, such as computer vision, sensor fusion, decision-making and planning, machine learning, and the Internet of Things to autonomously perform the collection, analysis, and application of data about the user and/or his/her context. This book begins with an overview of ZETs, then presents concepts related to their development, including pervasive intelligent technologies and environments, design principles, and considerations regarding use. The book discusses select examples of the latest in ZET development before concluding with thoughts regarding future directions of the field.

This book provides an in-depth review of the historical and state-of-the-art use of technology by and for individuals with autism. The design, development, deployment, and evaluation of interactive technologies for use by and with individuals with autism have been rapidly increasing over the last few decades. There is great promise for the use of these technologies to enrich lives, improve the experience of interventions, help with learning, facilitate communication, support data collection, and promote understanding. Emerging technologies in this area also have the potential to enhance assessment and diagnosis of autism, to understand the nature and lived experience of autism, and to help researchers conduct basic and applied research.The intention of this book is to give readers a comprehensive background for understanding what work has already been completed and its impact as well as what promises and challenges lie ahead. A large majority of existing technologies have been designed for autistic children, there is increased interest in technology's intersection with the lived experiences of autistic adults. By providing a classification scheme and general review, this book can help technology designers, researchers, autistic people, and their advocates better understand how technologies have been successful or unsuccessful, what problems remain open, and where innovations can further address challenges and opportunities for individuals with autism and the variety of stakeholders connected to them.

This book explores the ways in which AgeTech can contribute to healthy cognitive aging and support the independence of people with dementia. Technology can play a key role in supporting the health, independence, and well-being of older adults, particularly as a response to rapid worldwide population aging. AgeTech refers to the use of technologies, such as information and communication technologies (ICTs), robotics, mobile technologies, artificial intelligence, ambient systems, and pervasive computing to drive technology-based innovation to benefit older adults. AgeTech has the potential to provide new ways of meeting the growing demands on health and social care services to support people to stay healthy and active. As such, AgeTech represents an increasingly important market sector within world economies. The book also addresses some of the research, innovation, and policy challenges that need to be resolved if technology-based products and services are to fulfill their potential and deliver real-world impacts to improve the lives of older adults and their carers, thus promoting more inclusive communities for the benefit of all.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent childhood psychiatric condition, with estimates of more than 5% of children affected worldwide, and has a profound public health, personal, and family impact. At the same time, a multitude of adults, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, are living, coping, and thriving while experiencing ADHD. It can cost families raising a child with ADHD as much as five times the amount of raising a child without ADHD (Zhao et al. 2019). Given the chronic and pervasive challenges associated with ADHD, innovative approaches for supporting children, adolescents, and adults have been engaged, including the use of both novel and off-the-shelf technologies. A wide variety of connected and interactive technologies can enable new and different types of sociality, education, and work, support a variety of clinical and educational interventions, and allow for the possibility of educating the general population on issues of inclusion and varying models of disability.This book provides a comprehensive review of the historical and state-of-the-art use of technology by and for individuals with ADHD. Taking both a critical and constructive lens to this work, the book notes where great strides have been made and where there are still open questions and considerations for future work. This book provides background and lays foundation for a general understanding of both ADHD and innovative technologies in this space. The authors encourage students, researchers, and practitioners, both with and without ADHD diagnoses, to engage with this work, build upon it, and push the field further.