Introduction

Welcome to my blog! My name is Jason and I am a 19-year-old sophomore at the University at Buffalo studying Occupational Therapy (OT).

OT is an important field of healthcare that focuses on providing disabled individuals with the means to successfully function in their day to day lives (“Disabled” could mean having something as severe as Parkinson’s Disease or just recovering from an injury).

Most people who have worked with an Occupational Therapist developed the skills necessary to carry out their daily occupations without a need for any further support; however, some patients require compensatory mediums after therapy because their conditions are too severe. For example, a college student with no limbs would find it very difficult to write a paper even after therapy.

As we continue to advance technologically, assistive technologies (ATs) have proven useful in allowing struggling patients to adapt to their environment’s needs. Before the introduction of ATs, patients that needed extra help after therapy would receive assistance from a health care worker for a good portion of their day.

While consistently having a competent health care worker take care of your needs is useful, it takes away the autonomy of the patient to carry out her own will independently. ATs allow patients to be more independent in at least some of their everyday occupations. If you implement assistive technologies in the limbless patient example, you could use dictation technology which would allows the patient to use speech to formulate her essay on to a page instead of typing.

In my next few blogs, I will be diving deep into the future possibilities of assistive technologies and what those possibilities mean for the future of how Occupational Therapy is conducted.