Assistive Technologies and Environmental Interventions in Healthcare

An Integrated Approach

Lynn Gitlow, Kathleen Flecky, Lynn Gitlow, Kathleen Flecky

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119483267
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Occupational Therapy

Providing a holistic and client-centered approach, Assistive Technologies and Environmental Interventions in Healthcare explores the individual's needs within the environment, examines the relationship between disability and a variety of traditional and cutting-edge technologies, and presents a humanistic discussion of Technology-Environment Intervention (TEI).

Written by a multidisciplinary team of authors, this text introduces readers to a variety of conceptual practice models and the clinical reasoning perspectives. It also provides insight into how designers go about solving human-tech problems, discusses best practices for both face-to-face and virtual teams, and looks at the psychological, sociocultural, and cognitive factors behind the development and provision of assistive technologies.

• Examines a wide range of technologies and environmental interventions
• Demonstrates how a better understanding of the complexity of human interaction with both the physical and social environment can lead to better use of technology
• Explores the future of technology and research in TEI

Complete with a range of learning features such as keywords, case studies and review questions, this book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students in occupational therapy and other related health professions, as well as those undertaking certification and board examinations.

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The person, the environment, and technology: Introduction to the human‐tech ladder

Lynn Gitlow and Kathleen Flecky

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Outline

• The person, the environment, and technology: Introduction to the human‐tech ladder
• Models of disability
• Assistive technology and the environment
• Choosing the human‐tech ladder
• Human‐tech ladder
• Why are definitions important?
• Defining technology
• Defining AT
• Environmental interventions
• Categories of AT
• Summary
• References

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Learning outcomes

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Describe human technology as a complex interaction between a person and the environment.
2. Delineate distinguishing features of the Human‐Tech Ladder and a client‐centered approach.
3. Describe the relationship between the Human‐Tech Ladder and assistive technology.
4. Identify the components of the assistive technology continuum.
5. Compare medical and social models of disability in relationship to a client‐centered focus on the Human‐Tech Ladder and assistive technology.
6. Define assistive technology and environmental intervention.

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Active learning prompts

Before you read this chapter:

1. Describe the role that technology plays in your life in terms of how you interact with the environment on a daily basis to meet needed and desired tasks and goals.
2. Complete a brief literature search using the keywords, client‐centered, health, disability and assistive technology, medical models of disability, and social models of disability.
3. Using the website, www.resna.org, define assistive technology and locate the eligibility requirements for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) certification as an Assistive Technology Professional.
4. Define assistive technology using two or more sources.
5. Compare and contrast three definitions of assistive technology.
6. Classify assistive technology in three different ways.

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Key terms

• Assistive technology
• Assistive technology continuum
• Client‐centered
• Contextual factors
• Disability
• Disability models
• Environmental factors
• Environmental intervention (EI)
• Human‐Tech Ladder
• Technology
• Technology and environmental intervention (TEI)

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The person, the environment, and technology: Introduction to the human‐tech ladder

The changes we have all seen in technology and correspondingly with assistive technology in the past 10 years are mind‐boggling. Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2000) stated early in the twenty‐first century that computers are 100 million times more powerful than they were 50 years ago. The exponential growth of computer capacity that Kurzweil and others predicted in the late 1990s continues to advance and has the potential for improving all aspects of life (Diamandis and Kotler 2014). These exponential changes in technology make it hard to keep up with the latest innovations. For example, one of the chapter authors worked in an assistive technology laboratory in which serial port add‐ons to computers evolved into Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports rendering the former connections and their attachments obsolete within in less than five years. Currently, computers no longer come with disk drives and all of the software one needs to load on the computer comes from the cloud. Vicente (2006) stated, “… more and more technology is being foisted upon us at a faster and faster pace” (p. 13).

In addition, technology is clearly a necessary part of our lives. For many of us, it is difficult to remember a time when cell phones, laptops, or navigation devices were not available to those who could afford it. Furthermore, the convergence of multiple technologies into a single, small, handheld device such as a smartphone is common as part of our work and personal experiences.

Medical technology has evolved to intervene when the body fails. For example, you may know someone who has a heart pacemaker to pick up the pace when the heart lags. Moreover, as older adults live longer in many countries, these family members or neighbors may likely experience a joint replacement or utilize assistive or medical devices to recover or make daily tasks easier on either a short‐term or a long‐term basis.

Given the pervasiveness of technology in our lives, it is not surprising that the words “human” and “technology” are conceptualized in new ways to describe the link between our humanness and the non‐humanness of technology. The “Human‐Tech Ladder” is a unique concept developed by Vicente (2006) to merge the humanistic view of social sciences with the mechanistic and reductionist views of basic sciences and technological sciences. It is a systems approach that considers how to holistically match humans and technology. Rather than coming up with a new conceptual model, this book will use Vicente's Human‐Tech Ladder to provide a systematic way of structuring the text to consider all of the factors, which interact to make a match between humans and technology. The Human‐Tech Ladder is a five‐level visual model which can be used to conceptualize human factors, such as personal and environmental factors that interact with technology.

According to Vicente (2006), a bad fit or match occurs if human factors are not at the center of the technology design process. Knowing how the human mind and body react to multiple stimuli and situations with technology, and understanding the complexity of human interaction with both the physical and the social environment, can lead to better use of technology (Vicente 2006). This multifactorial approach mirrors development in the field of matching those who have disabilities with technology interventions. Moreover, a multifactorial approach is considered to be critical to making a successful human technology match (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017). This interactive approach in using technology as an intervention for people with disabilities has not occurred in a vacuum, and changes in ways of thinking about people with disabilities are important to review as an introduction to this text.

Models of disability

With the primary chapter author having practiced in the area of assistive technology for over 20 years, there have been many changes in the field, which influence the things one needs to consider when using assistive technology as an intervention. One critical change is the way that disability is viewed. Disability is “the dynamic interaction between an individual (with a health condition) and that individual's contextual factors (personal and environmental factors)” (World Health Organization [WHO] 2001, p. 190). This change in thinking about disability parallels the shift in thinking about disability from viewing it as strictly a medical problem to viewing it more as...