Innovative Technology Development
Community Engaged Research
Projects
AccessibleHome App Suite
The RESTORE Lab has collaborated with the UW-Milwaukee R2D2 Center, Columbia University, Texas Woman’s University, and Marquette University to develop the AccessibleHome App Suite. The suite includes two apps that have the capability of increasing knowledge and expertise to people invested in improving community living outcomes for people aging with disabilities.
- AccessibleHomePRO is a comprehensive home safety assessment and intervention development app with guided decision support and shared decision-making elements to be delivered at the point-of-care both in person and virtually. It guides home evaluators in a gold-standard home evaluation process and considers health conditions, environmental factors, and everyday tasks and skills to generate a report with recommendations for modifications that can be collaboratively created and shared with team members or stakeholders
- myAccessibleHome is a home safety check and home modification/resource education tool for people with disabilities, caregivers, and stakeholders who are interested in supporting safe and independent living but that may not have training in disability or home modifications (e.g., realtors). The app identifies home safety problems; provides tips and short, engaging, educational videos related to home modifications; resources; professional recommendations; ADA guidelines, and details how to find and vet expert installers
Access Ratings for Buildings App Suite
The RESTORE Lab is engaged in two funded projects focused on updating the Access Ratings for Buildings (ARB) App Suite. The App Suite was developed by the R2D2 Center at UW-Milwaukee and current collaborators include UW-Milwaukee, Columbia University, and Marquette University. The projects aim to scale and widely disseminate the apps to assess and share knowledge about the accessibility of restaurants. The apps are currently being rolled out in select communities in the United States.
The app, AccessPlace, elicits and documents building use experiences by people with disabilities and provides personalized accessibility information by prioritizing comments and ratings by other participants with similar disabilities. For example, a blind person would find information about building signage ranking higher than a comment about door width populated by a person using a wheelchair. A prioritization algorithm sorts across nine types of impairments (and combinations) to provide the personalized accessibility information.
The app, AccessTools, was created for assessors with varying accessibility knowledge, and to measure and document the complete accessibility of ten building elements such as parking, main entrances, restrooms and seating. Each of these building elements branches into dozens of sub-elements like audio levels, widths, heights, etc. A particularly efficient design called TTSS (Trichotomous, Tailored, Sub-Branching Scaling) allows us to create extensive taxonomies of questions yet maintain an efficient process
Cognitive strategies for optimizing brain Health And Managing transgenerational vascular risk factors Post-Stroke (CHAMPS-tr)
People living with the cognitive effects of stroke are at risk for recurrent stroke and further cognitive decline. Also problematic is that stroke risk clusters in families and biological family members of people who have ischemic stroke may also be at increased risk of stroke and/or cognitive decline. The primary goal of this study is to test the feasibility of a virtually delivered risk reduction program for lowering stroke risk and improving brain health. The study uses remotely supervised transcranial direct current stimulation (rs-TdCS) in addition to vascular risk reduction coaching and a metacognitive problem-solving protocol which contains guided discovery, goal setting, and strategy training. Recognizing that people living with the effects of stroke may have difficulty with community mobility, the entire study can be done virtually from the comfort of each participant’s home.
Multiple Errands Test
The Multiple Errands Test (MET) is an assessment that examines how executive dysfunction manifests in everyday life. Several location-specific versions of the MET have been developed over the past few decades.
Executive function can be difficult to assess in the home environment. For instance, many practitioners choose to use skilled observation of performance to identify impairments and performance problems. Unfortunately, practitioners may be examining procedural memory and not specifically looking at executive function if they choose this approach. Frequently, executive dysfunction is revealed when clients are attending to specific tasks that require them to: plan, organize, navigate, multi-task, utilize devices, and seek out information. The MET-Home was developed to support the assessment of those with even subtle executive dysfunction impairments.
Some assessments may not fully capture how the lived environment influences performance. For example, if a family member always helps with a certain activity or skill, a practitioner can observe how this plays out in context and may actually facilitate family-centered goal setting or recommendations for assistance with everyday tasks in the home. Additionally, assessments typically do not consider how self-generated strategies can support performance. By identifying how strategies are naturalistically used, practitioners can develop intervention plans that incorporate these strategies to meet goals. https://met-home.com/
The Oxford Digital Multiple Errands Test (OxMET) is an app developed by Dr. Sam Webb at Oxford University. Dr. Burns collaborated with Dr. Webb to make a version of the OxMET available to practitioners in the United States. The app can be easily accessed and completed in acute care and rehabilitation hospitals, even at bedside. https://www.ocs-test.org/oxmet/