Gov. Kaine announces launch of Virginia Easy Access

“Governor Timothy M. Kaine today announced an online resource especially designed for seniors and adults with disabilities.”
Article
NewsLeader.com, 13 August 2008

New tech helps physically impaired enter virtual worlds

“Relying on fleeting brain waves, a futuristic technology enables people with severe muscle disorder to operate computers and enter a 3-D virtual world to chat or stroll.
The technology, demonstrated by Junichi Ushiba of Keio University, opens up a world of possibilities for serious motion-impaired people to communicate with others and to work normally.”
Article
Malaysia Sun, 16 June 2008

A New Generation of Assistive Technologies: the robot appliance for eating

The assistive robotic system are designed in order to improve the independence of disabled or elderly people, but some of them are under-utilized because of their technical complexity, high cost, poor usability, and poor mapping to user needs within home environment. This innovative system is a new eating robot appliance for high-level disabled and elderly persons that simultaneously considers the users’ requirements for a specific task within a specific environment in order to gratify users’ emotional, perceptive, and psychological needs.
The concept of “robot appliance” contains the idea of a task-restricted robot that is safe, low cost, modular, simple but effective in its task, suitable for use with various types of food and easy-to-use (flexible and accessible interface).
It is an assistive robotic system portable and re-configurable, i.e. it can be used in diverse settings such as on a dinner table or on a wheelchair. The feeder system is the integration and combination of two independent units which assist people with disabilities both in eating and drinking from a common plate and glass.

Giuseppina Anna Di Lauro
CEO DEDALO SOLUTIONS, President Club of Spin-off Companies, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

To be presented at the ICMCC Event.

Disability Definitions and Trends for e-Health Policies and Services

Health Economics is at the core of the countries and populations welfare.
The actions of the different agencies of UN and of the international financial institutions as the World Bank on Health and Disability are expressed in terms of inclusive programs and projects for social-economic development.
The World Bank finances development projects involving disability components - in education, health care, infrastructures, children and youth - and supports a large variety of disability-related fields, such as data collection and statistics, research and analysis, technical assistance and knowledge sharing, addressing the specific needs of populations and countries. These activities can potentially have an impact upon disabled people, their family, or their organizations and eventually improve the prospects of poor disabled people in developing countries.
The Health concept extension from Health of people to Health of populations as intangible economical asset, expressing on one side the working force and on the other side protecting the intellectual core-business of the structured society, is a new driver that has deep impact on the definition of and on the strategies for disabled people and their inclusive role and contribution into the society.
The National Health Agencies and Services, focusing in the past only on the health-care of non-healthy populations, are progressively changing their strategies and infrastructures to take in charge prevention for healthy populations, prediction for health environmental, climate and epidemic shocks, rehabilitation for aging, chronic and vulnerable subsets of populations, creating and proposing innovative and adequate provider-user lifecycles in the predictive, preventative and regenerative medicine.
The WHO’s framework for measuring health and disability at both individual and population levels is expressed into the ICF ( The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health ), officially endorsed by the Member States in the Fifty-fourth World Health Assembly on 22 May 2001 (resolution WHA 54.21). The objective is to offer a common Metrics - the ruler of health and disability – and a way to analyse the shifting from one condition to another, taking into account the social aspects of disability and not only the as ‘medical’ or ‘biological’ dysfunction, and evaluating the impact of the contextual factors, especially the living environment, on the person’s functioning.
Assistive Devices and Technologies (such as wheelchairs, prostheses, mobility aides, hearing aids, visual aids, and specialized computer software and hardware) increasing mobility, hearing, vision, communication capacities and in general human performances, are collectively defined in a more comprehensive way as Life Supporting Systems – LISS. With the aid of these technologies, people with a loss in functioning are able to compensate and/or to enhance their abilities, and are hence better able to live independently and participate in their societies.
On the other side Rehabilitation is a logic and consequential extension of disability recovery strategies, as illustrated too into the WHO action plan 2006-2011 on Disability and Rehabilitation.
ICT Solutions will play a tremendous role to improve services and providers for disabled people not only into the health-care environment but also into the real daily activities at the condition to evaluate the social and cultural acceptance of the man-machine interactions, in the so-called Cyber-Medicine and Health Cyber-Services, and the concrete applicability, distribution and diffusion of technological solutions at large scale.

Giuseppe TRITTO, MD, FACS

To be presented at the ICMCC Event.

Special WABT session at ICMCC Event

Empowering Disabled People with ICT Tools
organised by Prof. Giuseppe Tritto, President of the WABT (World Academy of Biomedical Technologies)

Session overview:

• Disability definitions and trends for e-Health policies and services
  Giuseppe TRITTO, President WABT (ICET/UNESCO), World Academy of BioMedical Sciences and Technologies, Paris, France
• Empowering Mr Green with ICT tools
  Malcolm Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Data Communication Systems and Telemedicine, Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, UK
• ICT for home-based service to maintain the upper limb function: a telerehabilitation experience
  Marco Rogante, Dipartimento Tecnologie e Salute (Technology and Health Dept.), Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Institute of Health), Rome, Italy
• Research on a mechanically efficient sensing surface for information retrieval in healthcare.
  Peter Brett, Biomedical Engineering, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
• A New Generation of Assistive Technologies: the robot appliance for eating
  Giuseppina Anna Di Lauro, CEO DEDALO SOLUTIONS, President Club of Spin-off Companies, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa Italy

Blogging Against Disablism Day will be on 1st May 2008

“Blogging Against Disablism Day is an annual event in which disabled and non-disabled bloggers throughout the world unite in the cause of equality. On May 1st, bloggers shall write about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (disablism, sometimes ableism) and what we might do about it.”
Article
Diary of a Goldfish, 17 April 2008

E-patients With a Disability or Chronic Disease

“About a fifth of American adults say that a disability, handicap, or chronic disease keeps them from participating fully in work, school, housework, or other activities. Half of those living with a disability or chronic disease go online, compared to 74% of those who report no chronic conditions. Fully 86% of internet users living with disability or chronic illness have looked online for information about at least one of 17 health topics, compared with 79% of internet users with no chronic conditions.”
Report
Susannah Fox, Pew Internet and American Life Project, 8 October 2007

The Use of Information and Communication Technology for Treatment and Monitoring of Chronic Disabled Persons at Home

Workshop Organizer:
Miriam Vollenbroek-Hutten PhD, Roessingh Research and Development, The Netherlands

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