The Brain Injury Alliance of Colorado (BIAC) is a wonderful resource in Colorado for help and services for survivors of an injury to the brain, their families, and providers.
BIAC’s vision is that all persons with a brain injury thrive in their community. Through guidance, resources, support, and education, BIAC seeks to facilitate the lifelong growth of Coloradans affected by an injury to the brain.
CreateAbility was an exhibitor at their 33rd annual conference. This two-day conference was held at the beautiful Denver University campus in Denver, Colorado. This CEU-accredited educational event featured presentations by brilliant experts in the brain injury field, and was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, and make new ones.
Here are some of the solutions featured at our booth:
BEAM
Improved coordination of care, and communication within the care team.
BEAM helps the many people involved in taking care of an individual by helping coordinate resources and then aid in communicating within this team.
A simple dashboard provides a quick summary of an individual’s status, and highlights the items still needing to be addressed.
BEAM is a web-based tool that can be used by any device that runs a web browser, and can be used in group homes, assisted living or independent living centers, homes, or in vocational settings.
BEAM uses a freemium model, where many useful features are provided free, and additional features are provided for a modest fee.
All of CreateAbility’s solutions report in to BEAM.
MeMinder helps people with sequencing and memory issues, through a talking pictures to-list with video modeling.
MeMinder is an app that currently runs on Android phones and tablets to coordinate caregiving and provide task management for people returning to work after a brain injury. The MeMinder app works with CreateAbility’s BEAM Cloud to help people with the right permissions to monitor what tasks were completed and the ability to modify the tasks and schedules. These changes are then automatically updated on the MeMinder app. The goal is to help reduce the effort required by the care team in creating and managing the individual’s activities and how to do them.
MeMinder is a talking pictures to-do list that helps people with memory and sequencing challenges. Each step in the sequence of reminders can be static images with audio instruction, or full video.
The MeMinder app runs on Android phones and tablets to coordinate caregiving and provide task management. The MeMinder app works with CreateAbility’s Cloud to help people with the right permissions to set schedules and tasks, monitor what tasks were completed and the ability to modify the tasks and schedules, and coordinate with the other stakeholders in the person-centerer plan. Changes made in the cloud are automatically updated on the MeMinder app.
Intro to MeMinder –
Remote Monitoring and Interactive Prompting Systems
Back-To-Independence
The Back-To-Independence product is for people who have experienced an acquired brain injury, such as a stroke, or people who have survived a traumatic brain injury. This product emphasizes a schedule, reminders and detects specific activities such as medication adherence, movement and detecting events related to safety and well-being.
The Back-to-Independence system incorporates supports for individuals who have a visual impairment as the result of their brain injury.
Back-to-Independence now includes voice control via the Amazon Echo. This means that users can control and monitor the status of items in their home, such as:
Using a Microwave (via CreateAbility’s special Alexa-powered device)
Lights and appliances
TV and other IR remote entertainment systems
Know when your laundry cycle has been completed (via vibration and electricity monitoring sensors)
Know if you left the stove on, and unattended too long
Quantify how well you are sleeping
Know if you forgot to turn the space heater off
Know if doors and windows are open.
The system incorporates typical security-related sensors, such as motion sensors, only we turn it around and detect patterns of activity, such as on pantry or refrigerator doors (to detect if the individual was preparing meals and eating).
Prompts, cues and reminders are broadcasted to their TV, or small tablets running a special app, so that it doubles as a digital picture frame and slide show of favorite times, or family members.
These reinforcing prompts can be linked with sensors to help provide positive reinforcement, for items such as:
Hygiene
Monitor CPAP usage for those with sleep apnea
Prompts and reminders for proper oral hygiene, bathing or shaving.
Affectus
Affectus is a system that helps survivors, who also have behavioral or mental health issues. The system automatically detects yelling, the slamming of doors, the pounding on walls, as well as a fun way to self-report by throwing a Tantrum (a small toy with an embedded sensor).
These events trigger prompting the individual to rate their emotion level, and then guides the consumer through the Skills System coping mechanisms. The result is that the individual returns to a calmer state, more quickly.
Intro to Affectus video:
Mobile Avatar Coach
The goal of this demonstration of our new Mobile Avatar Coach is to illustrate how mobile technology can help people who are also receiving behavioral health services between therapy sessions. Because this method is available whenever / wherever, it provides the individual the opportunity to practice and fill in between sessions, and helps keep them from losing what they learned (again, only to be used in the context of therapy).
In the graphic above, a special fidget spinner is fitted with a button that will launch the MAC app when pressed.
CreateAbility’s Mobile Avatar Coach (MAC), is a type of “conversational agent” that have been shown to help people to share experiences they don’t want to talk about with another person,” and thus encourage more patient honesty. CreateAbility believes that this should only to be used in the context of therapy.
The following YouTube link is a screen recording while “Jeff” makes selections. A variety of Avatars and voices will be available soon, and the content will be customizable.