The aim of the ISISEMD project is to provide a pilot of innovative intelligent set of scalable services that will support the independent living of elderly people in general and in particular the group of elderly with cognitive problems or mild dementia and at the same time to support the formal and informal caregivers in their daily interaction with the elderly. The services will improve the e...

In 2000, representatives of the transplant community convened for a meeting on living donation in an effort to provide recommendations to promote the welfare of living donors. One key recommendation included in the consensus statement was that all transplant centers which have performed living donor surgeries have an independent living donor advocate (ILDA) "whose only focus is on the best inte...

Independent Living (IL) is more than a social movement; it is also an analytic paradigm that is re shaping the thinking of rehabilitation professionals and researchers alike. The IL paradigm is contrasted with the rehabilitation paradigm that has dominated disability policy, practice, and research. This article analyzes how the shift from the rehabilitation to the IL paradigm is likely to affec...

OBJECTIVES Occupational therapy literature describes various independent living programs developed by occupational therapists and at times documents their effectiveness, yet none of the literature reviewed examined the involvement of occupational therapists in independent living programs. METHOD Directors of independent living programs in the United States were surveyed to ascertain their use...

Information and communication technology applications can help increase the independence and quality of life of older people, or people with disabilities who live in their own homes. A risk management framework is proposed to assist in selecting applications that match the needs and wishes of particular individuals. Risk comprises two components: the likelihood of the occurrence of harm and the...

Since 1985, the Tufts University-Boston School of Occupational Therapy has experimented with a service model for Level I fieldwork that uses independent living skills (ILS) groups. Under the off-site supervision of the course instructor and a Level I coordinator, students taking an Advanced Group Process course have run ILS groups in community agencies using faculty- and staff-developed group p...

BACKGROUND Older adults with concerns of falling show decrements of gait stability under single (ST) and dual task (DT) conditions. To compare the effects of a DT training integrating task managing strategies for independent living older adults with and without concern about falling (CoF) to a non-training control group on walking performance under ST and DT conditions. METHODS Single center ...

In Japan, there is no national 24-hour home care system for people with severe impairments. Despite this fact, a small number of people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy on home mechanical ventilation pursue independent living. Therefore, our aim was to better understand the process by which these individuals arrived at this goal for independence (i.e., choosing to live at home in Japan instead ...

A model for Level I fieldwork in which students co-led independent living skills (ILS) groups in clinical settings and observed occupational therapy evaluation and treatment was implemented in a curriculum and evaluated for its effectiveness. The evaluation surveys from this study suggest that the model is most effective in courses and clinical settings that deal with adult and young adult clie...