NeuroPsychOnline, Cutting Edge Telehealth Application for Diagnosis and Treatment of Impaired Brain Function
NeuroPsychOnline, a pioneer and leader in the arenas of telehealth applications and the cognitive rehabilitation treatment of those with impaired brain functions, announces that it has now gone international.
(PRWEB) October 26, 2004
NeuroPsychOnline, a pioneer and leader in the arenas of telehealth applications and the cognitive rehabilitation treatment of those with impaired brain functions, announces that it has now gone international. The subscription based website is now serving clinical professionals and patients in Australia, Canada, England, India, Korea, and Saudi Arabia in addition to its home base here in the United States.
The web based service now has over 100 members providing diagnostic and therapy services to 680+ brain impaired patients. Dr. Odie Bracy, a neuropsychologist, founder of NeuroPsychOnline and a leader in the development of cognitive rehabilitation therapies since 1982, says that this new internet based system (www. neuropsychonline. com) for neuropsychological diagnostics and cognitive rehabilitation therapy, "is a natural evolution of the services that we have provided at the Neuroscience Center of Indianapolis (NSC) since 1984." NSC is a clinical service and research facility established in 1984 to provide diagnostic, rehabilitation and psychotherapy services to those with cognitive and/or psychological problems having a neurological basis or producing neurological symptoms. Clinical services at NSC include diagnostic and therapeutic treatment programs for individuals who are experiencing brain injury, stroke, learning/developmental disabilities, attention deficit disorders or other neurological based anomalies.
The purpose of the cognitive rehabilitation therapy offered at the NeuroScience Center is to help an individual acquire the highest level of cognitive functioning and functional independence possible for that individual. This is accomplished through treatment programs utilizing retraining strategies, teaching the use of compensatory skills (for areas not amenable to retraining), counseling, environmental restructuring, utilizing the services of educational and vocational training facilities and following our patients as they go into their next placement, be it work, school or just better living at home. Our work with the patient centers around that person's thinking skills, perception, memory, problem solving and responses. We (with hard work from our patients) have succeeded in producing statistically significant improvements in psychometrically measured indices of cognitive functioning; however, it is our goal that these changes result in significant improvement in functioning and meaningful participation in daily life events.
Our therapy program is set up as a homebased, outpatient computer assisted rehabilitation program. The patient is seen at our center for 1 one-hour visit each week. During this intensive, interactive session, we evaluate the patient on all therapy exercises prescribed at the last session, troubleshoot cognitive strategies and performance difficulties, re-evaluate our treatment plan and prescribe the therapy exercise assignments for the upcoming week. The patient then performs the therapy exercises at home, on their own computer, for at least 2 to 3 one-hour periods each and every day between the weekly sessions at the center. The whole program, as we administer it, typically takes the patient about 9 to 12 months to complete.
Now, we are providing the homebased therapy services to our patients over the internet and through NeuroPsychOnline we are enabling other facilities and professionals to do the same. The NPO website is divided into two Libraries -- the Library Of Neuropsychological Applications (LONA), which contains applications for assessment, differential diagnosis, clinical report writing, and treatment, and the Library Of Neuropsychological Information (LONI), which contains educational information about neuroanatomy and neurophysiology along with full access to the eJournal of Cognitive Rehabilitation and 21 years of its archived articles. One must experience NPO over the internet to fully appreciate how nicely this teletherapy system operates. For more detailed information, one can go to www. neuropsychonline. com and "Take A Tour."
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