Telecare design: offputting?

"What is telecare?" I her you ask! Telecare is essentially equipment that can help people live independently in their own home. The most common may be the pendent alarm (wear it around a persons neck, press the button if they need help because they have fallen for example).

There has been an interesting recent publication released in the Journal of Ageing and Society exploring how the design of telecare can put people off.

You can access this publication here.

Does familiarity affect the enjoyment of touchscreen games for people with dementia?

Professor Arlene Astell and Phil Joddrell of CATCH and the RAT group have recently published an article with colleagues from Rotterdam University in the International Journal of Medical Informatics. The paper reports on a study conducted within the international InTouch project investigating the use of touchscreen apps with people living with dementia.

The study involved an evaluation of two touchscreen games on the Apple iPad, with a focus on the concept of familiarity when selecting touchscreen activities in dementia care. The results provided further evidence that people with dementia can play and enjoy touchscreen games independently, and it was concluded that familiarity should not solely be relied upon when selecting activities as there is great potential in novel games too.

Visit www.actodementia.com/intouch for more information on the project.

New resource for Speech and Language Therapists with contribution by Mark Jayes

Mark Jayes has contributed to a new book on mental capacity assessment published this month. The book “Dealing with Capacity and Other Legal Issues with Adults with Acquired Neurological Conditions” provides guidance and practical resources for Speech and Language Therapists who work with adults who may need support with decision-making or require mental capacity assessment. Mark was asked to write a chapter based on his research in this area during his PhD. The book is published by J & R  Press. More details are available via this link.

Occupational Therapy Journal Article Published

Laura Di Bona has had a journal article entitled Profession-specific working in mental health: impacts for occupational therapists and service users published in the New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy. This article reports on research carried out with occupational therapists and mental health service users in Derbyshire. It reports that occupational therapists working in a profession specific way were more satisfied with their work environment and their practice was associated with enhanced service user outcomes.

To read the full article: 

Parkinson,S; Di Bona,L; Fletcher,N; Vecsey,T & Wheeler K (2015) Profession-specific working in mental health: impacts for occupational therapists and service users. New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy. 62,2 p55-66

Written by Laura Di Bona - Occupational Therapist and Researcher

Medipex NHS Innovation Awards: Simon Judge joint winner of digital health category

Simon Judge from Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is an Honorary Research Fellow within the CATCH research group and was chosen as joint winner in this category for his work on the ITU Communication Toolbox, funded by the Devices for Dignity, an app that allows patients on mechanical ventilation to efficiently communicate through a tablet computer device. The design of this communication aid has been evidence-based having drawn on a systematic literature review, qualitative data from interviews with patients and carers, and ‘embedded’ design work within an Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU). The resulting device is anticipated to improve communication, enhancing both the emotional state of the patient and the care they receive.

Simon Judge (right), Medipex Awards.
Image taken from Medipex website.

Barnsley AT Team Published in Communication Matters Journal

Barnsley AT made a healthy contribution to the 2014 Communication Matters Conference at the University of Leeds with several presentations:
Review of AAC Stroke Cases to Identify Common Practice and Consider Outcomes
Using Speech Sounds to Construct Messages for Aided Communication
Where to Start? A journey through a complex AAC assessment
A Newly Developed Computerised Accessible Receptive Language Assessment (CARLA)
Could Speaker Identification Improve the Effectiveness of Aided Communication?
Some of those who presented in 2014 have subsequently had their work published in the latest copy of the Communication Matters Journal.

Article from Barnsley AT Blog

Validation of the NANA (Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing) touch screen system for use at home by older adults.

Professor Arlene Astell and colleagues have recently published a paper about NANA: a touchscreen system developed in partnership with older adults for them to collect daily information about what they are eating and drinking, their physical activity, mood and cognitive function to support them to live well at home.

Reference: Astell, A. J., Hwang, F., Brown, L.J.E., Timon, C., Maclean, L.M., Smith, T., Adlam, T., Khadra, H., and Williams, E.A. (2014). Experimental Gerontology, 60 (100-107).    

First quarter after publication: 759 views or downloads

The article is open access and available here. 

Who turns up to Improving Access to Psychological Therapy Services Initial Appointments?

Laura Di Bona, a RAT group researcher, and others from the University of Sheffield have just had a paper published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, entitled:

Predictors of patient non-attendance at Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) services demonstration sites.

They found that the clinical characteristics of risk to self, severity of emotional distress, and illness duration, along with site, were more predictive of IAPT non-attendance than socio-demographic characteristics.

They suggest that clinicians should, therefore, monitor IAPT uptake in those they refer and implement strategies to increase their engagement with services, particularly when referring people presenting with suicidal ideation or more chronic illness.

The full article can be downloaded here. 

 

Laura Di Bona

Smoking Cessation for people with COPD – new systematic review and meta-analysis published

PhD student Kiera Bartlett and supervisors Professor Mark Hawley (RAT group) and Professor Paschal Sheeran (Department of Psychology) have published a systematic review and meta-analysis exploring effective behaviour change techniques for smoking cessation in people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

It has been published Open Access by the British Journal of Health Psychology and the early view is available now at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2044-8287/earlyview

Stopping smoking is known to slow the decline in lung function associated with COPD, so it is really important for people with the condition. Previous researchers have tried different approaches to encouraging smoking cessation in this population. This review explores these previous studies in terms of the behaviour change techniques they use; these are the ‘active components’ of the intervention, things like prompting self-recording or facilitating action planning. The authors then use meta-analysis to identify the behaviour change techniques that are associated with the most effective approaches. Hopefully, the findings can be used to help design effective smoking cessation interventions, tailored for people with COPD.  

New paper published on the role of the therapeutic relationship in E-mental health

RAT and CATCH member Dr Abigail Millings has had a new paper published in the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy: “(Inter)personal Computing: The Role of the Therapeutic Relationship in E-mental Health”.

The paper discusses E-mental health, defined as the use of information and communication technology to support and improve mental health conditions, and the importance of the therapeutic relationship in relation to the benefits of using this type of technology in delivering these interventions.

The paper can be found here and its full reference is:

Cavanagh, K. and Millings, A. (2013) (Inter)personal Computing: The Role of the Therapeutic Relationship in E-mental Health, Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy,  doi: 10.1007/s10879-013-9242-z, Published online July 2013.

Mark Hawley to give keynote lecture at Workshop on Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies (SLPAT)

Mark Hawley has been invited to give the keynote lecture at this year’s Workshop on Speechand Language Processing for Assistive Technologies (SLPAT) in Grenoble on 21-22 August. His talk will be entitled ‘Speech and Language Processing for Assistive Technologies in practice: lessons from translational research'.

The talk will distil experience and results from several projects, over more than a decade, which have researched and developed the application of speech recognition as an input modality for assistive technology (AT). Current interfaces to AT for people with severe physical disabilities, such as switch-scanning, can be prohibitively slow and tiring to use. Many people with severe physical disabilities also have some speech, though many also have poor control of speech articulators, leading to dysarthria. Nonetheless, recognition of dysarthric speech can give people more control options than using body movement alone. Speech can therefore be an attractive option for AT input.

Techniques that have been developed for optimising the recognition of dysarthric speech will be described, resulting in recognition rates of greater than 80% for people with even the most severe dysarthria. Speech recognition has been applied as a means of controlling the home (via an environmental control system) and, probably for the first time, as a means of controlling a communication aid. The development of the Voice Input Voice Output Communication Aid (VIVOCA) will be described and some early results of its evaluation presented (see previous blog post for open access to the project's most recent publication).

The talk will discuss some of the lessons learnt from these projects, such as:

·       The need to work in interdisciplinary teams including speech technologists, speech and language therapists, health researchers and assistive technologists

·       The value of user-centred design, involving users in defining their wants and needs and then working with them, in an iterative manner, to refine the AT such that it becomes usable and acceptable

·       The gap that exists between the results that can be achieved in the lab and those achievable in people’s homes under real usage conditions –something that is not often covered in research papers

·       The practical approaches that can be applied to optimising recognition for individuals. It is often possible to make significant improvements in recognition rates by altering the configuration of the AT set-up.

The talk will conclude by describing some of the future potential applications of speech technology that are being developed, or considered, for people with disabilities as well as for frail older people and people with long-term conditions.

[Written by Mark Hawley]