An observational study of powered wheelchair provision in Italy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Powered wheelchairs are complex and expensive assistive devices that must be selected and configured on the basis of individual user needs, lifestyle, motivation, driving ability, and environment. Providing agencies often require evidence that their financial investment will lead to a successful outcome. The authors surveyed a sample of 79 users who had obtained powered wheelchairs from a Regional Health Service in Italy in the period 2008-2013. Follow-up interviews were conducted at the users' homes in order to collect information about wheelchair use, and its effectiveness, usefulness, and economic impact. The instruments used in the interviews included an introductory questionnaire, QUEST (Quebec User Evaluation of Satisfaction with Assistive Technology), PIADS (Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Devices Scale), FABS/M (Facilitators and Barriers Survey/Mobility), and SCAI (Siva Cost Analysis Instrument). The results indicated positive outcomes, especially in relation to user satisfaction and psychosocial impact. A number of barriers were identified in various settings that sometimes restrict user mobility, and suggest corrective actions. The provision of a powered wheelchair generated considerable savings in social costs for most users: an average of about $38,000 per person over a projected 5-year period was estimated by comparing the cost of the intervention with that of non-intervention.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".