Our Mission

The mission of the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics (ICP) is to develop technology and therapy techniques that increase the range of cognitive disabilities from brain injury and stroke that can be successfully treated by cognitive rehabilitation.  Our mission addresses the needs of individuals who have had conventional cognitive rehabilitation and continue to have cognitive disabilities that impose limits on the ability to perform activities that are important to them without caregiver intervention.  Computer technology is able to increase the cognitive performance of individuals with cognitive disabilities.  Computer technology has been and continues to be an underutilized resource in Cognitive Rehabilitation.  Because information and computer technology continue to be underutilized, our mission includes methods of treating brain injury survivors nationwide.  Since our founding, we continue to be successful in expanding the range of activities people with cognitive disabilities are able to perform, providing them with an increased quality of life.  Most patients have been able to make gains. Some patients made remarkable gains. Patients become active and emotionally engaged in the process of their therapy, which is far better than achieving just patient compliance.

Elliot Cole, PhD

Elliot Cole, PhD, is the founder and president of the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics. Dr. Cole is a computer scientist, and is internationally recognized for his expertise in designing computing technology for treating cognitive disabilities, as well as Home Telehealth Therapy+Technology. More recently, he developed Patient-Centered Design, a process for personalized medicine therapy that can produce high levels of patient compliance and engagement. In computer science, his interest is Human-Centered Computing, looking at ways that individuals and groups can use computers to better achieve their own ends. This fits in well with his work in telehealth. His focus has been on expanding the boundaries of therapy for cognitive and physical disabilities, increasing techniques for therapists to treat their patients.

In the mid-1980s, he was given a tour of a residential traumatic brain injury (TBI) rehabilitation center, and became convinced that computer technology could reduce some of the disabilities experienced by individuals following a TBI. A pilot study provided Proof-of-Concept, that computer software could be a cognitive prosthesis for TBI.  His publication on this work was the first on cognitive disorders in the field of computer science.

He then founded the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics as an R&D center, with the mission of bringing technology to the TBI rehabilitation field.  This focus was then expanded to cognitive disabilities from other diseases.  

Dr. Cole built the R&D staff with people from a dozen clinical disciplines and several computing disciplines, coupled with healthcare research.

The National Institutes of Health awarded several grants to Dr. Cole, including grants from the Division of Fundamental Neuroscience. Participating clinical sites included the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Dartmouth Medical School, and Moss Rehabilitation Hospital. Dr. Cole served as an NIH Study Section member for six years; Study Sections provide the scientific peer review of research proposals. Dr. Cole has also served as a proposal reviewer for the National Science Foundation, The Department of Defense, the National Institute for Disabilities and Rehabilitation Research, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Cole is the author of more than 100 papers and presentations at scientific and professional meetings in North America, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. He was a Visiting Scholar at the  University of Pennsylvania’s Organizational Dynamics program, for the 2012/2013 academic year where he was exploring issues of the diffusion of technological innovation in healthcare.

A book with case studies and models, by Dr. Elliot Cole

Patient-Centered Design of Cognitive Assistive Technology for Traumatic Brain Injury Telerehabilitation, a book by Elliot Cole, PhD, 2013. Available for free download in many academic libraries. Available for purchase on Amazon.com for the print edition and content-preview. This book is part of the Morgan and Claypool computer science series on Assistive, Rehabilitative, & Health-Preserving Technologies.

Abstract
Computer software has been productive in helping individuals with cognitive disabilities. Personalizing the user interface is an important strategy in designing software for these users, because of the barriers created by conventional user interfaces for the cognitively disabled. Cognitive assistive technology (CAT) has typically been used to provide help with everyday activities, outside of cognitive rehabilitation therapy.

This book describes a quarter-century of computing R&D at the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics, focusing on the needs of individuals with cognitive disabilities from brain injury. Models and methods from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) have been particularly valuable, initially in illuminating those needs. Subsequently HCI methods have expanded CAT to be powerful rehabilitation therapy tools, restoring some damaged cognitive abilities which have resisted conventional therapy.

Patient-Centered Design (PCD) emerged as a design methodology which incorporates both clinical and technical factors. PCD also takes advantage of the patient’s ability to redesign and refine the user interface, and to achieve a very good fit between user and system. Therapy delivered to the home makes it practical to integrate the patient’s actual activities into therapy, and has a rich set of advantages for the many stakeholders involved with brain injury rehabilitation.

Table of Contents
Overview / Some Clinical Features of the Cognitive Disabilities Domain / Adapting Computer Software To Address Cognitive Disabilities / The Primacy of the User Interface / Patient-Centered Design / Cognitive Prosthetics Telerehabilitation / The Active User and the Engaged User / Outcomes and Anomalies / Conclusions, Factors Influencing Outcomes, Anomalies, and Opportunities.