Improving the process of evaluating a home for wheelchair access

The clinicians caring for persons with spinal cord injury at Mount Sinai started to look at various mobile applications that would create a blueprint of a home and of all the ones that they looked at, magicplan was thought to be the best.

They then applied to the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation for support to test use of magicplan for evaluating patients’ homes for potential inclusion of durable medical equipment that will fit, and began a fruitful collaboration with magicplan to do just that.

First, the clinicians at Mount Sinai created a “Durable Medical Equipment” database of different types of wheelchairs, commodes, and other things that was incorporated into magicplan which appeared as accurately scaled avatars of wheelchairs, commodes, and other equipment within the mobile application. They also created a video to teach anyone how to create an informative floor plan and how to use this floor plan to evaluate whether or not chosen durable medical equipment will fit within a home before the equipment is actually ordered and delivered.

The way the clinicians and researchers at the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City initially and other centers later implemented and tested magicplan included several steps. First, an iPad installed with magicplan app was provided to a patient’s family member who then took it home and used it to create a floor plan of the home.

Next, the family member brought back or e-mailed back the completed floor plan to the clinician therapist who then completed the home evaluation by inserting the avatars of the durable medical equipment items needed by the patient from the “Durable Medical Equip.” database into the floor plan.

If the chosen equipment fit and seemed appropriate, it was ordered by the clinicians in consultation with the patient. Lastly, they rigorously tested this procedure for performing home evaluations by evaluating how easily people could perform the measurements and how useful the information obtained was in choosing appropriate wheelchairs and other equipment.

The entire development and testing process took three years. 

The Result