Functional hand evaluation for occupational therapists

Software for objective and morphologically based assessment of hand movement patterns easily accessible to occupational therapists.

It will be carried out the creation of an easy access software for occupational therapists, which allows to evaluate the functionality of the hand and movement patterns, which yields results with a high level of objectivity and based on the morphological characteristics of the structure, so that it can be validated and can present a high level of reliability in its use. This is based on the information obtained from a systematic review carried out for the definition of the guidelines to be taken into account for the elaboration of the evaluation protocol.
The software should include the aspects of functionality, execution skills, morphological characteristics and occupational performance in the different areas of the occupation.

In Occupational Therapy, evaluations seek to identify barriers that affect occupations. It should be noted that an endless number of instruments are used in the assessment of patients with different health conditions to measure the capabilities and skills of a person. However, most of these are developed by other health professionals, which requires greater efforts at the time of clinical reasoning, since the object of evaluation varies from one discipline to another.

In addition, although there are this type of evaluative instruments, the occupational therapist still does not have an instrument that meets the objectivity through valid and accurate results with morphological bases that allow the application before, during and after for professional reasoning with the occupation as the object of study. Thus, when applied, it fulfills the relevance of providing specific information for the orientation in the intervention processes.

For this reason, our solution is based on the creation of a hand evaluation protocol carried out through a software created by our team, which highlights the objectivity and morphological bases, easily accessible to occupational therapists.

And in this way, promote greater attention and improvement in the rehabilitation treatment of the population with hand impairments, an indispensable structure for the performance of any activity of daily life.

This solution will impact the lives not only of occupational therapy professionals, but also, and mainly, of all people who require treatment in this discipline for hand rehabilitation and have the availability of the evaluation. In this way, it will be possible to carry out a better analysis and professional and objective clinical reasoning for the intervention strategies to be taken into account for the care of these users.

On the other hand, it will provide greater access to researchers in the area of health in Colombia, who are interested in carrying out projects related to this anatomical structure (hand), allowing an increase in the generation of resources for strengthening the academic processes of both professionals and students in health.

During our career we wanted to understand in more depth, the importance that morphology could have in our career (occupational therapy). By having different experiences such as dissection and the discovery of an anatomical variation in the process, we also realized that really everyone, in their training as occupational therapists, should have these same experiences in order to understand and broaden the perspective for the care of users, experiences that are limited and that, in most cases, students are unaware of in universities in Colombia. 

For our degree work, we wanted to focus on the hand and its evaluation, since it is the structure with the highest percentage of affectations in the country. And after going through our professional practices for a year, we realized this need through the empirical experiences we had. 
Therefore, during the research process, we carried out a deep systematic review on the subject in the different countries of the world for which we found documentation, and we realized that in reality there has not been a deep study on the subject and that it is necessary to do so. From this information, we obtained the guidelines for the future development of the presented solution.

Currently, we are in a concept stage, because  our degree work is based on the same topic, and seeing that it is really a need in our discipline in Colombia (occupational therapy), we want to continue with the development of the hand evaluation prototype, since in this way, we will be able to significantly expand the perspective of intervention not only of occupational therapists, but also of other rehabilitation professionals in our country, which means a level of development and progress in the treatment of the population from an objective perspective and therefore, of greater impact on the occupational performance of people, and therefore, generate a positive effect on the physical well-being directly and indirectly mental and emotional.