Assistive technology supports maintenance or improvement of an individual’s functioning and independence, though for people in need the access to assistive products is not always guaranteed. This paper presents a generic quality framework for assistive technology service delivery that can be used independent of the setting, context, legislative framework, or type of technology. Based on available literature and a series of discussions among the authors, a framework was developed. It consists of 7 general quality criteria and four indicators for each of these criteria. The criteria are: accessibility; competence; coordination; efficiency; flexibility; user centeredness, and infrastructure. This framework can be used at a micro level (processes around individual users), meso level (the service delivery scheme or programme) or at a macro level (the whole country). It aims to help identify in an easy way the main strengths and weaknesses of a system or process, and thus guide possible improvements. As a next step in the development of this quality framework the authors propose to organise a global consultancy process to obtain responses from stakeholders across the world and to plan a number of case studies in which the framework is applied to different service delivery systems and processes in different countries.
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PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Protein delivery in the critically ill still is a highly debated issue. Here, we discuss only the most recent updates in the literature concerning protein nutrition of the critically ill.RECENT FINDINGS: Up to now, there are no randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published on enteral provision of protein that were randomized for protein level of intake. In the past year, there have been two new observational studies published, one of which in critically ill children. Also, two randomized controlled trials with high parenteral amino acid provision have been published. The overall view on nutrition support has not been changed convincingly by these studies. Recent findings have confirmed that protein and amino acid provision are highly important for outcome in critically ill patients. For the first time, a randomized study confirmed this, however, only on the short term. The other RCT confirmed that an extreme dosing of amino acids is not related to improvement in outcome. One observational study showed that the effect of protein on outcome should be adjusted for energy intake and vice versa, showing that adequate protein is related to improved outcome and adequate energy provision is not. The other observational study confirmed importance of protein in paediatric ICU but also gained some insight into improvement of protein delivery by postpyloric feeding and usefulness of a dedicated dietitian in the ICU.SUMMARY: We will continue to improve protein delivery to critically ill patients; however, the quest for evidence and feeding guidelines still remains.
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Technological innovations such as parcel lockers can only contribute to reducing the negative impact of last mile logistics on people, planet and profit outcomes if consumers adopt them. Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) as a theoretical lens, the purpose of this study was to design effective interventions in the pre-delivery stage that stimulated consumers to choose to use parcel lockers, focusing on incentives and actions that online retailers and logistic service providers can easily implement. A vignette-based experiment was used to examine the impact of providing consumers with information about sustainability, information about parcel lockers and information about distance to nearest parcel locker on their choice to use a parcel locker instead of receiving their package at home. The originality of the study is twofold. The role of geographical context which is oftentimes overlooked was examined explicitly in this study by conducting the study with participants from the Netherlands and Lithuania. The present study used causal mediation analysis to study the combined effects of interventions and previous experience with parcel lockers through the UTAUT constructs. The findings showed that providing information about sustainability and information about the distance to the nearest parcel locker were effective interventions, however the effect of distance was country specific. Causal mediation analysis showed that familiarity with parcel lockers was positively associated with the choice to use parcel lockers by increasing perceived ease of use, expected performance, and reducing perceived risk.
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As the Dutch population is aging, the field of music-in-healthcare keeps expanding. Healthcare, institutionally and at home, is multiprofessional and demands interprofessional collaboration. Musicians are sought-after collaborators in social and healthcare fields, yet lesser-known agents of this multiprofessional group. Although live music supports social-emotional wellbeing and vitality, and nurtures compassionate care delivery, interprofessional collaboration between musicians, social work, and healthcare professionals remains marginal. This limits optimising and integrating music-making in the care. A significant part of this problem is a lack of collaborative transdisciplinary education for music, social, and healthcare students that deep-dives into the development of interprofessional skills. To meet the growing demand for musical collaborations by particularly elderly care organisations, and to innovate musical contributions to the quality of social and healthcare in Northern Netherlands, a transdisciplinary education for music, physiotherapy, and social work studies is needed. This project aims to equip multiprofessional student groups of Hanze with interprofessional skills through co-creative transdisciplinary learning aimed at innovating and improving musical collaborative approaches for working with vulnerable, often older people. The education builds upon experiential learning in Learning LABs, and collaborative project work in real-life care settings, supported by transdisciplinary community forming.The expected outcomes include a new concept of a transdisciplinary education for HBO-curricula, concrete building blocks for a transdisciplinary arts-in-health minor study, innovative student-led approaches for supporting the care and wellbeing of (older) vulnerable people, enhanced integration of musicians in interprofessional care teams, and new interprofessional structures for educational collaboration between music, social work and healthcare faculties.
Drones have been verified as the camera of 2024 due to the enormous exponential growth in terms of the relevant technologies and applications such as smart agriculture, transportation, inspection, logistics, surveillance and interaction. Therefore, the commercial solutions to deploy drones in different working places have become a crucial demand for companies. Warehouses are one of the most promising industrial domains to utilize drones to automate different operations such as inventory scanning, goods transportation to the delivery lines, area monitoring on demand and so on. On the other hands, deploying drones (or even mobile robots) in such challenging environment needs to enable accurate state estimation in terms of position and orientation to allow autonomous navigation. This is because GPS signals are not available in warehouses due to the obstruction by the closed-sky areas and the signal deflection by structures. Vision-based positioning systems are the most promising techniques to achieve reliable position estimation in indoor environments. This is because of using low-cost sensors (cameras), the utilization of dense environmental features and the possibilities to operate in indoor/outdoor areas. Therefore, this proposal aims to address a crucial question for industrial applications with our industrial partners to explore limitations and develop solutions towards robust state estimation of drones in challenging environments such as warehouses and greenhouses. The results of this project will be used as the baseline to develop other navigation technologies towards full autonomous deployment of drones such as mapping, localization, docking and maneuvering to safely deploy drones in GPS-denied areas.
In de automotive sector vindt veel onderzoek en ontwikkeling plaats op het gebied van autonome voertuigtechnologie. Dit resulteert in rijke open source software oplossingen voor besturing van robotvoertuigen. HAN heeft met haar Streetdrone voertuig reeds goede praktijkervaring met dergelijke software. Deze oplossingen richten zich op een Operational Design Domain dat uitgaat van de publieke verkeersinfrastructuur met daarbij de weggebruikers rondom het robotvoertuig. In de sectoren agrifood en smart industry is een groeiende behoefte aan automatisering van mobiele machinerie, versterkt door de actuele coronacrisis. Veel functionaliteit van bovengenoemde automotive software is inzetbaar voor mobiele robotica in deze sectoren. De toepassingen zijn enerzijds minder veeleisend - denk aan de meer gestructureerde omgeving, lagere snelheden en minder of geen ‘overige weggebruikers’ – en anderzijds heel specifiek als het gaat over routeplanning en (indoor) lokalisatie. Vanwege dit specifiek karakter is de bestaande software niet direct inzetbaar in deze sectoren. Het MKB in deze sectoren ervaart daarom een grote uitdaging om dergelijke complexe autonome functionaliteit beschikbaar te maken, zonder dat men kan voorbouwen een open, sectorspecifieke softwareoplossing. In Automotion willen de aangesloten partners vanuit bestaande kennis en ervaring tot een eerste integratie en demonstratie komen van een beschikbare automotive open source softwarebibliotheek, aangepast en specifiek ingezet op rijdende robots voor agrifood en smart industry, met focus ‘pickup and delivery’ scenario’s. Hierbij worden de aanpassingen - nieuwe en herschreven ‘boeken’ in de ‘bibliotheek’ - weer in open source gepubliceerd ter versterking van het MKB en het onderwijs. Parallel hieraan willen de partners ontdekken welke praktijkvragen uit dit proces voortvloeien en welke onderliggende kennislacunes in de toekomst moeten worden ingevuld. Via open workshops met uitnodigingen in diverse netwerken worden vele partijen uitgenodigd om gezamenlijk aan de hand van de opgedane ervaringen van gedachten te wisselen over actuele kennisvragen en mogelijke gezamenlijke toekomstige beantwoording daarvan.
