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Showing posts from November, 2013
To Sit or Not To Sit.. I walk into a crowded coffee shop with my laptop in hopes of getting some work done but there are no seats available. I look around and spot a square table for four in the corner of the room and briskly charge towards it before someone else calls shotgun. I'm thrilled that I found somewhere to park myself for the next few hours but wondered why no one else was sitting there before. A little symbol on the corner of the table tells me it's a handicapped accessible table. Nobody at the other tables seems to be leaving anytime soon and there aren't any other places nearby where I could steal wifi from. So, do I sit at the handicapped accessible table or not?  I look around and start wondering what people will think of me if I sat at that table. I mean, I can just get up if someone needed it, right? Then the therapist in me took over and turned around, just as a neighboring couple got up and left. For the last one hour of sitting at my new non-accessi
The Future of Occupational Therapy I went to the WESTEC conference a few weeks ago, which showcased the latest innovations in manufacturing technology and engineering. I strolled through booths displaying electric welding systems, optical communication encoders, expansion clamps, CNC machines, and all things redefining the future of manufacturing. What's this got to do with Occupational Therapy? Well, after strolling through a lane offering free candy, I came across the Additive Manufacturing, or commonly known as 3-D printing, booth. Recently, there have been a lot of advances made in the field of medicine such as targeted cancer therapies, the first full face transplant, bionic hands that position using an iPad app, bluetooth devices that coordinate motor movement, and 3-D computer models that customize eye socket design. But what really blew my mind was in a glass showcase - a 3D printed "magic arm," also known as WREX (Wilmington Robotic Exoskeleton) and a 3D prin