Really interesting discussion, here's some thoughts in no particular order:
1.ea mentioned device evaluation and there are a couple of issues here.
The AT Forum is just about to circulate a briefing to highlight concerns
about prospective changes to the evaluation programme for medical devices
(inluding AT) which the Healthcare Industries Task Force have
recommended. Essentially responsibility for evaluation will pass to NHS
PASA from MHRA. Some people are concerned about this because they say the
evaluations will focus on the needs of the NHS and aim for value for money
rather meeting users needs, but I'm not sure how widespread that concern
is. Also an approach which is appropriate to medical devices used in
hospitals is probably (definitely?) not suitable for evaluations of
assistive technology. Anyway briefing will be out soon and I'll post a
link to let you know when we can get it out/ on the website. One of the
issues we are raising is the need for consultation on evaluation
frameworks and your views are welcome.
The other issue about evaluation is the potential for user reviews of
existing items - again this would need some thinking about as it would be
useful if negative reviews could be excluded which arose from the trial of
an inappropriate technology. The current leading database for existing AT
is the Disabled Living Foundations database - DLF Data - it's profile is
not high because you have to subscribe to it. Again this is something the
AT Forum is working to get made freely accessible to the public because
then there would be a baseline database other databases could build on. I
think it would be really interesting if we could persuade the DLF to
include user reviews like Amazon does (even it it does it by getting their
therapists to work with users in their demonstration centre in the Harrow
Road, to avoid the inappropriate technology type negative reviews).
p.s. Ricability are set up to do user-perspective evaluations of assistive
technology - funding is a big issue - a properly set up evaluation can not
be done in an afternoon, are we trying to reinvent the wheel?
Sorry bit rambling.
Keren
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