It seems like the initial information gathering process of this project is complete. That means the early flood of tasks should start slowing to a steady flow-- I keep saying this in hopes of it coming true.
We finished meeting with the clinical leads from each module-- vestibular, wheelchair, hip/knee, shoulder--and reviewed the initial drafts of the storyboards and demonstration of assessments. Having these conversations gave us what we needed to start thinking about workflow and technology development. The next step was to complete whiteboarding sessions to compile and synthesize all the information. We started trying to map out what we knew, assumptions we were making, and find the gaps in our knowledge. These generated a lot of questions, but they also helped us to narrow our focus and vision for this project.
Whiteboard sessions:
Tele-Rehab 2.0 Workflow
Technology development
Site selection and community engagement
Specifically, in these sessions we sketched out an initial draft of remote assessment workflow (i.e. the whole puzzle). This was helpful to provide further information to Zosia about site selection and community engagement. Then we identified stage 1 technology that needs to be developed to support remote assessment and measurements. So although there were a lot more questions, things now seem simpler and more focused.
We have taken steps towards getting the technology development moving forward. This has involved discussion with Michel and Kinetisense about goals, timelines, and specifications. We have established that the technology does not need to be production ready, just clinically deployable.
Having done all this homework, we will now be able to confidently form our operational and strategic committee to present what we have accomplished and where we are going next. This includes our goals to develop modules for stroke rehabilitation and the GLA:D program. Funding opportunities and potential collaborators have already been identified for these.
PROMs and ethics are at the top of my mind to get started but, hopefully, once we get to them it will be relatively straightforward because of all the work we have done to think through the project and protocol.
The administrative side of the project is also progressing well. Emily has been working to keep things moving forward in the background.
Soon we will start to prepare the phase 2 progress report for Alberta Innovates/Pfizer. We will need to think about what metrics we can also collect to represent the progress we have been making, ex. time spent on project by clinical leads.
All in all, things are going well! My hope is all the time and effort into this preparatory work pays off and things can move a more quickly as we head into phase 3, which will see all our planning come to fruition.
-Courtenay
