Automated retrieval of information on assistive devices (ARIAD).

Introduction Application of new technology to the problems of rehabilitative engineering and physical medicine is producing new kinds of assistive devices, as well as new versions of familiar devices . In some areas of the field the advances occur so rapidly that individual doctors and related health care professionals have difficulty keeping their information up to date. A result can be the risk of failing to prescribe the most appropriate-aids for patients . Consumers or their families have similar problems when they try, independently, to learn about the aids that are now available for their various needs. The situation has prompted a number of efforts to categorize and systematize information about assistive devices, and to make relevant information available to those needing it. The U.S . Government's Department of Education publishes a resource guide called Rehabilitation Engineering and Product Information : Resource Guide (1) which lists major sources of rehabilitation information available from private and federal agencies . This is an indirect information source and its main strength is the completeness of its listings of places to go for detailed information . (Among the sources listed are the VA's Office of Technology Transfer, Smithsonian Science Information Exchange, the National Technical Information Service of the U .S . Department of Commerce, the National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, NASA's Technology Utilization Program, the American Foundation for the Blind, National Rehabilitation Information Center (NARIC), and the Trace Research & Development Center for the Severely Communicatively Handicapped.) Another resource guide, from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, lists more than 50 data banks containing information on assistive devices for the disabled (2). Prominent among the computerized data systems intended for widespread accessibility in the field of rehabilitation aids and assistive devices is a commercial effort called Accent on Information . It is a proprietory computerized system developed by Raymond Cheevers (3). The National Institute for Handicapped Research has been sponsoring ABLEDATA, which has been designed to be used through persons called information brokers who accept, interpret, and process requests for information . Data held by ABLEDATA may be accessed through either computer and/