Early Intervention Service for Children with Development Delay at Non-Urban Area

The early intervention of children with development delay is more effective if it is applied in the golden period of 0-6 years old therefore to greatly reduce the long-term burden of society. In the process of intervention, the most important two issues are accurate functional assessment and abounding functional training. However, the rural areas are not able to meet the above needs due to the lack of therapist and the difficulty to gain rehabilitation equipment. The main purpose of the study is to solve the pain points of early intervention at rural area through the innovation and integration of technologies. It intends to provide adequate solutions to the urgent need of early intervention at rural area following innovation on the interdisciplinary application. First of all, an interdisciplinary team with experts in fields of special education, clinical medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and technology is formed. Next, virtual reality and wearable sensing technology are applied to develop home-based cognitive and motor training systems which are supplemented by Routines-Based Interview (RBI) program to achieve family-centered home/community early intervention. Further, the artificial intelligence (AI) technology is used to analyze multi-modal data, including clinical assessment, neurobehavioral sensing information, task performance of VR system, and establish an evidence-based model for intelligent assessment. Then, an Internet of Things (IoT) platform is built to provide real-time video streaming and data visualization capabilities in order to carry out remote assessment. Also, electronic prescription function is implemented to achieve tele-rehabilitation. Finally, the proposed system will be applied to field test to verify its effectiveness and provide service.