Coastline Community College Acquired Brain Injury Program

People with Brain Injuries Leading Fuller Lives with Windows Mobile

The nearly 1.4 million Americans who sustain a brain injury each year—including approximately one in five veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan—find their lives and those of their family members suddenly changed in ways they may never have imagined. Now, innovations being pioneered at Coastline Community College in Costa Mesa, California, are helping survivors of traumatic brain injury live fuller, more independent lives with the help of Microsoft® Windows Mobile devices. The work is helping to make brain-injured people more aware of the specific cognitive processes that have been impaired so they can learn to supplement those processes, not only by using Windows Mobile devices, but in other areas of their lives as well.

Brain injury has been called “the silent epidemic.” Unless a physical disability accompanies the brain injury, others may never know an individual has any disability at all. While the number of people who do not receive emergency care is unknown, according to the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) approximately 1.1 million Americans are treated and released from emergency rooms each year for brain injuries.

BIAA estimates that 75% of these incidents involve concussions or other mild brain injuries, such as those related to children’s and adults’ sports activities. As a result, between 80,000 and 90,000 people experience the onset of a long-term disability that can have devastating effects on memory, categorization, attention to detail, organization, and the ability to make decisions.

Many people use Windows Mobile personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Smartphones to be more efficient. However, for people with brain injuries, these devices are proving to be a lifeline to independence. The calendar, reminders, and contact information provided by Windows Mobile can be invaluable to this population.

While often highly functional in other areas of their lives, people with brain injuries can be overwhelmed by some everyday tasks because they often have difficulties with short term memory. This requires them to have reminders for even the most basic of tasks, from personal hygiene to taking medications to unloading the groceries. For example, when leaving the house for a doctor’s appointment, navigating the route and figuring out how to return home can be major challenges.

Long term memory can be problematic as well. Without a reminder, a brain injured person may know they saw a movie, but have no idea when, who they went with, or what the movie was about.

 

The Solution

Helping People Develop Strategies for Living with a Brain Injury

For the past 30 years, Coastline Community College’s unique Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) Program has helped people develop strategies for living successfully with a brain injury. Michelle Wild, Co-Department Chair of the ABI Program at Coastline, teaches classes and has now written a book based on this work, which is helping people use Windows Mobile devices to compensate for impaired cognitive functions that result from brain injuries. The book, Memory Compensation Using the Pocket PC, uses the Pharos Traveler 535, a Windows Mobile device from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Pharos Science & Applications, Inc., to illustrate how any of the more than 140 Windows Mobile devices available from Pharos and other device manufacturers can help make life easier for this growing population.

Coastline’s ABI Program and Wild’s book focus initially on orienting people with brain injuries to Windows Mobile and to their particular device, so they can make the most of the Windows Mobile Calendar, Tasks, and Contacts features. “At first,” Wild explains, “we focus on just getting comfortable with the overall perspective; how the Calendar works, the different views of the Calendar, and which view is most efficient for different kinds of activities.”

“When students are learning to create new appointments in Windows Mobile, we focus on the concept of categorization by having them assign activities or appointments to a specific category, so that they can then learn how to search very quickly using the Windows Search feature to find information.” Students eventually learn how to synchronize their devices with their computers. Built-in cameras help users put names and faces together, literally. Later, they learn to use Microsoft Word for note taking and Microsoft OneNote® in conjunction with Windows on their desktop or laptop computers. “It’s a very powerful tool for them,” says Wild.

Combining Windows Mobile features with Robust, Easy-to-use Navigation

Global positioning services (GPS) software and supplemental mobile applications for dealing with financial or other tasks are introduced later to help deal with more advanced challenges. One of over 9,000 Microsoft Windows Mobile partners developing over 18,000 applications, Pharos works with Coastline to provide the ABI Program students with a Windows Mobile GPS PDA, the Traveler GPS 535, and a Windows Mobile Smartphone, the GPS Phone 600, Traveler 117, or Traveler 127. Wild chose Pharos’ Windows Mobile GPS PDAs and Smartphones for Coastline’s ABI program because the devices combine the Windows Mobile Calendar and Contacts features, which are so important to her students, with the robust, easy-to-use navigation software Pharos developed.

Pharos’ intuitive navigation software guides users with turn-by-turn directions with voice prompts. If a person misses a turn along the route, the Smart Navigator software automatically recalculates a route and gets the user back on track. The award-winning Smart Navigator is full-featured, GPS-ready navigation software for Windows Mobile-based devices that includes detailed street-level map coverage for the U.S. and Canada. It offers real-time GPS tracking, point-A-to-point-B routing, automatic voice-guided driving directions, turn-by-turn visual and text directions, automatic re-routing, multi-stop routing, location search based on address, intersection, or points of interest, and more.

Regaining a Sense of Security and Autonomy after a Brain Injury
“Windows Mobile has become a part of our students’ lives,” says Wild. “They carry it with them all the time, keep information in it, use the GPS system – there are even some games available through third-party vendors that are very much like traditional cognitive retraining games. Students love that, because many of them use door to door transit services and can be on the van or bus for quite some time, so they use the PDA for games, the Internet, as a MP3 player. It’s amazing how many different ways our students use the devices.”

The Pocket PC has been a transformative tool in my life. It has strengthened my ability to be independent, efficient, and productive. It has given me hope and a concrete vehicle with which to create a new, fulfilling, and fruitful future for myself. ABI Program Graduate Coastline Community College

One of Wild’s students, a practicing lawyer prior to her injury, uses her Windows Mobile PDA for virtually everything, from keeping track of appointments, to managing her finances, and even caring for her daughter, who has learned to prompt Mom to get out her PDA whenever she needs to take the girl and her friends somewhere or pick them up. “Even the children have recognized that Windows Mobile makes a huge difference in the parent’s life,” says Wild. “Doctor appointments, school meetings, everything gets scheduled in her PDA, which she then synchronizes daily to make sure she doesn’t lose anything.”

“Windows Mobile gives people a real sense of security and much more autonomy than they oftentimes feel after a brain injury,” says Wild. “One of my students,” she relates, “was house-sitting, took the dog for a walk, and ended up having no idea where she was.” Because the woman happened to have her PDA along, and had the address where she was staying in her Contact list, she simply used the Pharos GPS software to get back to where she needed to be.

Another student, a devoted Harley Davidson rider, has continued to ride his motorcycle after his brain injury. For him, the Windows Mobile device provides great comfort because no matter where he roams, he can simply hit “Home” on Smart Navigator and it automatically calculates his route and provides voice-prompted directions.

Transcending Technical Skills and Transforming Lives
The issues people face after brain injury are not just cognitive in nature. There are psychosocial issues as well, according to Wild, including feeling unworthy, like they are not pulling their own weight, because they forget things, such as paying the bills. “In an interesting way, the ‘coolness factor’ is another way that Windows Mobile devices can help students,” says Wild. “The PDA helps get rid of the stigma that a lot of people with brain injuries feel.”

“After the brain injury,” she explains, “they have to have paper and pencil and make notes about everything. A lot of students are very resistant to that because, even though the general population takes notes, they feel that because they have to take notes, they stand out. With a PDA, they feel they no longer stick out, and that’s a very powerful thing. It gives them a sense of belonging and makes a huge impact on them psychosocially.”

In addition, while PDAs are proving to be invaluable tools for helping people with brain injuries get on with the business of living, Wild’s work builds on these technical skills to help students make what she calls the “cognitive connection.”

“While I’m teaching computer skills, I’m actually focusing on cognitive skills,” Wild explains. For example, when students learn about entering categories for appointments, they also talk about categorization in general and how that is impacted by brain injury. “We learn to use the PDA to help, but then I give them additional assignments that work on categorization in their personal life. So the PDA is actually a concrete tool that I use in order to teach them certain cognitive skills, which can then serve as a jumping off point for them to apply those cognitive skills in other aspects of their lives.”

More Information

For more information about products and services available from Pharos Science & Applications, Inc., call (310) 212-7088 or visit the Web site at: http://www.pharosgps.com/