Identifying Appropriate Technologies for P&O Services Worldwide: Balancing bio-psychosocial issues and user-needs assessment with engineering analysis

Abstract

P&O services are a means to enable individual and state benefits, by improving independence, reducing care responsibilities and enabling people to return to work. Basics or bionics, a challenge to researchers, clinicians and healthcare providers is to identify Appropriate Technologies. As well as enhancements to P&O devices, many technologies have the potential of increasing access to services, such as:

• more efficient clinic and workshop processes,
• measurements,
• disseminating information to educate clinicians and service users, and
• systems to enable community-based service.

To optimise any technology’s use in low resource countries it is essential to understand the social, cultural and historical context of the environment (AHRC, 2016). We cannot assume how these technologies will be received by the societies they are intended to benefit, even if they are clinically successful in other cultures, and we must plan for sustainable implementation.

Our symposium will present interdisciplinary collaborative approaches addressing these issues:

Cambodian state-of-the-art:

• clinical service provision;
• clinician training;
• scope for improvement in service access, information dissemination efficiency, follow-up and education; and
• which technologies could help with local resources?

Psychosocial co-research tools and principles:

• the importance of assessing needs from user perspectives;
• co-development of research aims;
• adopting and utilising a co-researcher ethos;
• innovative semi-structured interview methods around technology; and
• results from clinician, service user and family-member interviews

Potential technologies to enhance P&O access:

• benchmarking 3D scanning for residuum and device shape monitoring;
• physical activity assessment, and the need to cross-reference with PROMs; and
• digital casenotes for community-based assessment, and synchronisation.

Statement of the objective / learning objectives

This session will provide insights into methods of assessing user needs of P&O technologies, identifying Appropriate Technologies and planning for sustainable implementation, through a lens of Cambodia-UK collaborations.

This session focuses on the topic Developing Countries.