Neuropsychonline Weblog

Once you have your own subscription, you can use NPO from anywhere in the world that you have access to an internet computer. This applies to professionals and to patients, students or any other end users. Just go to our website and login. The system will immediately recognize you, no matter what computer you used. However, you must have your own subscription, with username and password to do this. If you are just being seen at your therapist’s facility and don’t have your own personal membership then you cannot login on your own. If you are doing therapy on NPO and have your own membership then you can do therapy from the Public Library, an internet cafe, at home or in the hotel on vacation. Any computer that you use does need an up-to-date Flash Player plugin installed. If it doesn’t then you can download and install it free from www.adobe.com or just click the link on our homepage.

The NeuroPsychOnline (NPO) Cognitive Rehabilitation Teletherapy Program consists of six Tracks of exercises designed to improve the user’s cognitive skills. The Tracks are:

1. Attention Skills
2. Executive Skills
3. Memory Skills
4. Visuospatial Skills
5. Problem Solving Skills
6. Communication Skills

Eventually, each Track will contain 25 Tasks, arranged in an order so that the most basic of cognitive skills are addressed first in therapy. As the user progresses, the Tasks evolve to become more complex and challenging. In addition, each Task contains four levels of difficulty. Currently we have twelve tasks in Track 1, six in Track 2, twelve in Track 3, twelve in Track 4, seven in Track 5 and four in Track 6 and each of these 53 Tasks have four levels of difficulty.

You, the therapist, can operate the whole therapy system on a manual basis where you select from a menu the exercise you want to do with a patient, that is there in therapy room with you, and/or you can set up a prescription that includes the Tasks that you want your patient to do at home between your therapy sessions. To do the latter you must assist your patient in converting their registration from a patient only to a patient subscriber. There is a link under the Administration Menu within the Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy section that will facilitate this procedure. A prescription that you would set up for a patient subscriber to do at home could contain from one to six Tasks at a time. Only one Task within a particular Track can be assigned in a prescription. A patient’s advancement through levels and also through Tasks is dependent on their performance on the Tasks. They must meet performance criteria to pass a run and they must pass on three consecutive runs to totally pass a level. Totally passing a level means that particular level will not be presented again. The patient is automatically advanced, by the system, to the next level or Task if they perform well enough on a Task. However, you, the therapist can always control, manually, how a patient advances through the system it you want to deviate from the established protocol.

Each task is set up in a game like format. To do therapy the patient simply plays the game and tries to do the very best they can. We have tried to make the Tasks fun to do so that therapy will be a more enjoyable experience. However, even the Tasks that are not so much fun must be completed in order for the patient’s skills to develop properly. If a patient already has some skill in a certain area and they get assigned a Task in that area they should pass through it fairly rapidly and move on to the next level.

Welcome to our NeuroPsychOnline Weblog! We have decided that this may be the best way to provide you vital information about NeuroPsychOnline (NPO) and keep you up to date with what we are doing with the system. As we are new to the blog world you may see changes on a daily basis as we learn more about working within this environment. The information will be archived automatically and will be searchable. Over time we should accumulate a helpful compendium of information for your use. In addition, there will be numerous feedback opportunities included that will be invaluable to our further development.
We will also be including a blog on our patient subscriber interfaces, in a newsletter format, that will be directed toward making the patient’s experience with our therapy system more comfortable and more rewarding for them.