Overview

The RERC on Accessible Medical Instrumentation (RERC-AMI) is guided by the vision that all persons should have access to healthcare instrumentation and services and to employment in healthcare professions regardless of disability.

The goals of the RERC-AMI are to:

• Increase knowledge of, access to, and utilization of healthcare instrumentation and services by individuals with disabilities.
• Increase awareness of and access to employment in the healthcare professions by individuals with disabilities.
• Serve as a national center of excellence for this priority area.

The RERC-AMI is conducted collaboratively by Partners in the Midwest and on the East and West Coasts. This national team conducts Research, Development and Training projects and targets dissemination of project results to those constituencies most affected by their work: individuals with disabilities, healthcare service providers, and healthcare instrumentation manufacturers.

Specific Research Projects include:

• Needs Analyses for people with disabilities as both recipients and providers of healthcare services, and for manufacturers of healthcare instrumentation.
• Usability Analyses to determine what makes certain medical instrumentation either exemplary or problematic yet essential to healthcare service provision.
• Accessibility Metrics, using universal usability analysis to identify classification and measurement approaches that could be used to explore metrics for accessibility of medical instrumentation.
• Policy Analyses to explore how medical policies affect healthcare utilization and employment in the healthcare professions of persons with disabilities.

Specific Development Projects include:

• Development of Tools (Mobile Usability Lab) for usability and accessibility analysis.
• Development of Modified and New Accessible Medical Instrumentation.
• Development of Emerging, Accessible Healthcare Technologies, through monitoring of trends and involvement in demonstration projects.
• Development of Design Guidelines for accessible medical instrumentation and model policies for healthcare service provision.

A key event of the RERC-AMI was our State-of-the-Science Workshop held on October 20-21, 2005.