Things are progressing well! We now have first drafts of a storyboard for hip/knee replacement follow-up at 6 weeks and 12 months, wheelchair seating and assessment, vestibular/balance, and shoulder completed.
In some cases, the storyboard template was helpful for the clinical leads to get started and organize their thoughts. In other cases, such as the wheelchair group, it was too basic and they were able to provide a whole slew of standardized assessment forms. We walked through the storyboards with each of the clinical leads and discussed all the different elements to a remote assessment. These were all productive meetings, in that they left us with lots to think about and some tangible next steps. Of course, detailing the entirety of a remote assessment is too much to expect within 1-2 hours so it feels like we have really only scratched the surface. However, now we can move away from paper and start trialing these remote assessments, and by doing that explore it further.
It was a very positive experience to sit down and discuss the remote assessments in-depth with the clinical leads and the potential technology and process innovation. I don't remember encountering a single "no" from them. They are really game to try anything and work through the project with us.
Following these meetings, we were faced with tackling the technological challenges that emerged from the first drafts of the storyboard. We have divided the technology needs into the following categories: Videoconferencing, Kinetisense, Opti-trak, off-the-shelf, and novel technologies. We met with Kinetisense to discuss some of our needs. We also met with Michel. These meetings brought up some good questions about our priorities. What is a need? What is a nice to have? What represents good enough? So we have a follow-up meeting next week to sit down and outline the remote assessment workflow which will give us a chance to think through those things and come up with something to present to the clinical leads. We are also going to set up a whiteboard session with someone from Computing Science to discuss creation of a dashboard for the remote assessments.
We have also made progress on seeking additional funding for the project through the Heart & Stroke Foundation and the Community Initiatives Program.
Wish me (and Emily!) luck as the project continues!
-Courtenay
