E06 - Tim McLennan & Transformative World of Assistive Technologies

“[L]ike most people who have experienced catastrophic injuries, it's a major point in your life— everything changes.All your assumptions get thrown out the window of what tomorrow's going to be like. But there does seem to be a sort of a major pivotal role when people experience these of either overloaded and really struggled with life from that point, or it becomes such a driving force for motivation and an ability to see new potentials and options.”

Tim McLennan

In this episode, Scarlet speaks with Tim McLennan, a Churchill Fellow and clinical rehabilitation engineer based at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. Tim's journey into the world of assistive technology was profoundly influenced by a life-altering experience. Tim's story is one of personal transformation and a deep commitment to making a difference in the lives of those who have faced adversity. He specialises in innovative assistive technology, a field that aims to enhance the independence and quality of life for individuals with disabilities.

Tim provides valuable insights into the world of assistive technology, explaining its significance and showcasing its far-reaching impact. He dispels misconceptions, discussing the diverse range of assistive devices beyond the well-known examples like wheelchairs and prosthetics. Tim introduces us to cutting-edge innovations, such as exoskeletons and brain-computer interfaces, which hold the potential to revolutionise the lives of those with disabilities.

Visit Tim McLennan’s Churchill Trust project page here.

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EPISODE 6: TRANSCRIPT - TIM MCLENNAN

Yellow Edge: Yellow Edge in association with the Winston Churchill Trust proudly presents the Wayfinder podcast. In this series, we ask high performing individuals how they plotted the path to success. Our guests are all Churchill Fellows. Having been provided the opportunity by the Churchill Trust to research their chosen field internationally, the Wayfinder explores the often winding path of how these fellows came to their professions and catalogs, the trials and tribulations faced along the way.

And now your host, Scarlet Bennett.

Scarlet Bennett: Welcome to the Wayfinder Podcast. I'm Scarlet Bennett, and with me today is Tim McLennan. Tim is a clinical rehabilitation engineer working with innovative assistive technology at the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, in WA, Western Australia. Tim, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

Tim McLennan: Thank you for having me.

Scarlet Bennett: Your eyes were open to the use of assistive technology in a very personal way. Tell us about that experience.

Tim McLennan: Umm, yes. So when I was a new grad as an electrical engineer not knowing anything about the world of assistive technology or disability, I was flying gliders as a hobby in the wheat belt of Western Australia.

And a storm front that was a little unexpected came in and I didn't get back to the airfield in time. Ended up crash-landing not far from the airfield, but due to that crash, experienced a spinal cord injury and was unable to walk. So the, the, the paralysis that occurred at the time due to the, the swelling and everything meant that I was essentially paralyzed from the waist down.

I got shipped off to a hospital and was unfortunately told I need to learn from that stage of what life was going to be like in a wheelchair from that point. I was very fortunate to be able to regain through a lot of rehabilitation about eight months of working with the teams at, at the then Royal Perth at Shenton Park Hospital, regaining the vast majority of my function back again.

So I am able to independently walk again, but that was eight months of, of going from not being able to move to being able to get into a wheelchair to be able to, get up onto crutches and, and then eventually one crutch and, and, and get rid of it. You know, just have some orthotics on my feet cause they haven't fully recovered.

And so I can largely go about my business as I did before, just with a little bit of assistive technology strapped to my ankles.

Scarlet Bennett: That's really interesting. And we, these experiences change us, don't they? What, what did you learn what changed for you as a result of this experience?

Tim McLennan: Well, yeah, it was a like most people who have experienced catastrophic injuries, it's a major point in your life.

Everything changes, all your assumptions get thrown out the window of, of what tomorrow's going to be like. But there does seem to be a, a sort of a major pivotal role when people experience these of either overloaded and, and really struggled with life from that point, or it becomes such a driving force for motivation and an ability to see new potentials and options.

Unfortunately I did get to see that and it changed my whole career path. I, I, I realized that my engineering skills could be better put to use in the world of rehabilitation, engineering and, and, and assistive technology to have a really meaningful impact on helping people who have been in unfortunate situations to be able to regain losses that may have been no fault of their own.

Umm, yeah.

Scarlet Bennett: It's absolutely fascinating, isn't it? Tim, for listeners who don't understand the terminology, what is 'assistive technology?'

Tim McLennan: Yeah. Well I like to say that assistive technology is a bit of a tautology in the sense that any technology has been developed to assist a person or a process. But the actual term 'assistive technology' is usually used in relation to devices to assist a person with a disability, to try and regain some of their lost function or abilities, and ideally restore independence so that people who have suffered a loss due to illness or injury aren't relying on carers or friends or families to do whatever activities they wish to do.

The most common thought that sort of people associate with assistive technology, the big obvious things like wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, communication devices. However, assistive technology can become common enough and no longer thought of as a disability product and sometimes referred to as mainstream. And, and glasses for sight correction are a great example of this. An assistive technology to, you know, to improve sight.

Scarlet Bennett: That makes sense. So it's actually more, it's more common than, than people realize.

Tim McLennan: Absolutely. Yes. And basically, there's many types of assistive technology there as there are things that we as humans want to do.

Scarlet Bennett: Can you give us some examples, Tim, of the type of technology that's out there that people might not have heard of? You know, we're familiar with wheelchairs and, and spectacles and some of these other things. But what else is out there that, that might really interest people?

Tim McLennan: Absolutely. There's, there's sort of some really big ones that with the rapid changes of technology, I think are going to become fruitful in the, in the near future, things that seemed very sci-fi not so long ago. But we're, we're starting to see what we, we'd hoped in terms of the extension from wheelchairs to be like stair climbing chairs. You don't have to have the environment changed to suit the wheelchairs. Things like exoskeletons, so people can strap on a device to restore their ability to walk, or even surgically implantable stimulation to restore paralysis without needing any external devices.

And along those lines, there's even technology in the sense being driven from another angle, which is the ability to improve human capability who may have not experienced any loss in the first place and, and that one is brain computer interfaces. So this is a, a where an electronic device is worn on the head or implanted into someone's skull that can read the electrical signals of your brain and interpret them, interpret them as your thoughts or intended commands.

So this is, this research has been happening for a while, but it's improving rapidly at the moment. There'll be a major life change for anyone with a significant physical disability or experiencing what's called 'Locked-in Syndrome' where you can think and comprehend and, and, and most likely see what's going on, but have no ability to move or communicate your thoughts or feelings.

And in that scenario, having an electronic device, being able to read your mind and typing what you want onto a screen or typing out an email or controlling the device, would open up so many opportunities. But even for someone without a disability, the ability to speed up rather than using your two fingers on a jumbled keyboard or multitask at the speed of your, your rapid thought switching, will have so many applications to improve everybody's capabilities.

But yeah, hopefully it helps along with those most at need and bring them up at the same time.

Scarlet Bennett: That's extraordinary. And it is very sci-fi, isn't it? It's, it seems like there's almost no end to what it can do.

Tim McLennan: Absolutely.

Scarlet Bennett: Tim, you work as part of a rehabilitation multidisciplinary team. What exactly is your role and how would you contribute in a scenario like this?

Tim McLennan: Yeah, so my, my job role is termed 'rehabilitation engineer,' which is not a common role, I'm unfortunate that the Western Australian Department of Health has had the foresight to foster this kind of role in the, in the hospital settings. But we work alongside all your standard allied health, your speech therapists, your occupational therapists, physiotherapists and allied health team obviously works with, with the doctors and nurses in rehabilitating people, getting them out of hospital and regain their independence as much as possible.

So everybody in the multi, multidiscipline team is there cause of their diverse skills and abilities and perspective to try and come up with a holistic solution, cause you can't fix a problem if you don't know all the issues coming from every, every direction. And so a rehabilitation engineer will certainly help out with any of the technical aspects.

We often, umm, there'll be an idea of what the team will want to try and achieve, but to physically make something construct it, we've got access to all the, the construction tools, workshops, etcetera, the materials, we can build things, we can use electronic means for changing someone's ability, say if they've got a small amount of movement in their hand, that can be used to control an electronic device and then that electronic device can be used to do multiple other functions to yeah, to regain sort of the activities that person wants to be able to do independently.

Scarlet Bennett: It sounds like each case is quite tailored to the individual?

Tim McLennan: Absolutely. There are often sort of diagnoses or categories of injuries that a certain device will help in that area but the everybody's journey and and abilities are different. Everybody's preferences are different so usually there needs to be some form of for, for the best outcome, some form of customization or yeah or personalization of assistive technology

Scarlet Bennett: Mm that makes perfect sense. Are you able, without breaching confidentiality obviously, but are you able to share a case study of of of how this works and what it might look like?

Tim McLennan: I guess one of the the the typical scenarios we would see and is a significant percentage of our caseload would be assisting people with motor neurons disease. And this is a debilitating illness that currently isn't a cure. There aren't even that many solutions to even slow down the progress at this point. But this is where people start losing physical function usually in the extremities of the limbs and then and slowly so you might find it difficult to walk and then the legs become too weak to be able to carry you. You might find then a restriction in finger ability, so you can move your arm but not your fine motor of your fingers. And then that slowly, essentially shrinks back into only having the ability to move your head and then- since that I mean after that just looking about. Often it involves a loss of speech as well. So you've got someone who's still got the full ability to think and feel and see and hear and experience everything but the inability to to control. So we try and support these people. And as their condition or symptoms progress we would initially look at-- with the loss of hand function, we'd find alternative ways of using a phone. So instead of a touchscreen using a a mouse for example to to access the phone and tablet so you can still be able to do email still call people those kinda things. With the loss of limb, like arm function we would be able to use the head So as you move your head left right up and down that would be controlling the mouse on the screen. With the loss of voice, you obviously need programs on the devices that you're using to have alternative ways of typing out what you want to say. And quick access methods of being able to say phrases to try and speed up that ability to get your thoughts out into speech. And then the all the other things that go along-- things like your ability to control the position in your wheelchair or your bed, for comfort. The ability to turn on lights, and turn them off, fans, air conditioning, those kind of things. So luckily electronic devices nowadays can give us more and more access to those kind of things. So if we can tailor the access of being able to control those devices for the person then that will go a long way to helping us maintain their independence as much as possible.

Scarlet Bennett: Thank you. That's really fascinating. I understand that the open source community contributes to solutions. Can you explain a little bit about how that works?

Tim McLennan: Yeah absolutely. This is something that's sort of in in my heart that I'd like to to to push further. The open source as a concept is basically freedom of information in the sense of if there are solutions to problems in the world, ideally it would make sense to make those solutions and information freely available to everybody. So that if I manage to create a nice device that's is useful for someone here, someone in the other side of the planet isn't going to get my personal help if I can convey that information across and get somebody over there to be able to help and hopefully that information or or solution can can reach many many more people. So open source is the the publishing of information of instructions, of programming code, of examples of how problems can be solved. And in the disability sector I think it's it's really important because there are very few commercial opportunities. The disability market is very small. There's a small number of people that can benefit from this specific device. And so often it doesn't make a lot of sense to hold onto that information make a commercial solution and try and sell it anywhere else. And often it's going to people who have got the least amount of resources to be able to purchase these devices. So there is a couple of great movements. One I'd love to give a shout out to is the Makers Making Change which is a Canadian organization, And basically wherever they can if there's a way of saving 3D models because a lot of devices are are little physical devices that can be 3D printed. If you can make that solution, save it to the web, someone on the other side of the world can download that solution it print on their 3D printer and have the exact same device available to them for very very low cost.

Scarlet Bennett: That's brilliant isn't it?

Tim McLennan: Yeah

Scarlet Bennett: In 2016 you were awarded a fellowship with the Winston Churchill Trust. What motivated you to apply for your fellowship?

Tim McLennan: Umm that was thanks to my wife who also worked in the the health industry and was aware of this opportunity. But she basically made me realize that I'm privileged enough to be in this position to be able to help as many people as we can, but in a very niche area that there aren't a lot of either opportunities to learn, or share, in the small community of rehabilitation engineering within Perth. So-- and over time technology changes so rapidly such that if you aren't keeping up to date constantly yeah, you're working with with older tech and and there's most likely better solutions available. So the Churchill Fellowship was an amazing opportunity to be able to go overseas, choose my path, find the the people who are working in similar areas, or new areas that we don't have the resources to work in here. To be able to connect with them, learn from them, along the lines of that open source, thought of sharing information, sharing resources on on trying to work on problems, and and make the world a better place as quickly as possible

Scarlet Bennett: And how has the project shaped the work you do now if at all?

Tim McLennan: It it's it's shaped it greatly. I've I've had the I guess the confidence and the the credibility to be able to reach out locally make some great collaborations with universities here. I think collaboration between the resources of universities and hospitals is a really important way of being able to progress assistive technology. And I saw that happening quite well in in places like England and Canada, and the US So being able to to bring that information back and try and replicate similar things here has been a big one. And just the ability to know that there are other people solving similar problems that I can now contact and say 'we've got this new problem have you come across anything like it? What do you...' and have a brainstorm together.

Scarlet Bennett: And so it really tapped you into global best practice at the time and and helped you to build that broader network.

Tim McLennan: Absolutely.

Scarlet Bennett: Yeah fantastic. And and you've recently won an Impact Grant through the Churchill Trust. What is this and what are you doing with it?

Tim McLennan: Yes. So this is another fantastic opportunity and I've gotta thank The Trust again for this. Where I guess the Churchill Trust had recently it had the issue where a lot of their fellows that they wanted to award couldn't travel overseas and and do that great experience that I managed to do just before COVID hit. However, they still wanted to be able to make a difference in an impact in Australia and wanted to work out how they could best do that. And decided to award some grants to returned fellows who have come back with an idea and are struggling to implement it. So my project, which I've been working on for a little while and having a bit of issues finding the funding for internally, is to try and bridge the gap that we currently have between discharge from hospital and people returning back into the community.

So obviously once somebody is medically stable, we need to free up hospital beds. So the idea is to get people out of hospital and returned home as quick as possible. But, without the appropriate assistive technology that's been trialed, tested and installed in the person's house, usually people are discharged home and are quite reliant on 24-hour care, or at least lots of paid care or the burden falls onto the family and friends who are living with them.

Or there's no appropriate places or not enough appropriate places to be discharged to, and that's often holding up hospital beds that could be better utilized. So my plan is to create a, what I'm calling, a technology for independence demonstration environment. And this is going to be like a, a mini smart home essentially.

So people, whilst this are still in inpatient, will be able to use this room, pretend that they're at home, be able to go about their, their daily activities and see if they're able to make make food for themselves in the kitchen. Are they able to get in and out of bed? Are they able to go to the bathroom and, and, and toilet on their own?

And basically have a, a one-stop shop where we have as much assistive technology, smart home type features in this room so people can see what is actually available and have a chance to use it to say, yes, this is gonna work for me, or this doesn't work and we can come up with a solution so that they have an idea of, of how their life can be assisted when going back into the community before they get there and don't have that, that option.

Scarlet Bennett: That sounds like a really, really valuable thing to offer people.

I'm wondering now, you know, as you're saying that, I'm wondering how we're tracking in Australia compared to what's being done around the rest of the world.

Tim McLennan: Yeah. I guess that was one of the things that came out of my Churchill Fellowship was the, I guess the good news story that, that in Australia we are very fortunate to have quite a good healthcare system. With the emergence of the NDIS, which was starting up around the time when I had my Churchill Fellowship.

That's also another fantastic opportunity that many in the rest of the world don't get in terms of funding for a much broader sense of, of assistive technology and, and services that a lot of people, even in some of the other Western worlds don't get access to.

But I guess like in every scenario there are certain areas that, that we could, we, we could improve in. And because everybody's journey's different, it's really difficult for these systems to be able to cater for everyone perfectly. But, I think we've got a, on average, a fairly good access to good and high level technology.

And we are building the services to be able to have a much better quality of life for people who, who need it. But like everything, there'll be hiccups along the way. So a lot of those are being ironed out at the moment.

Scarlet Bennett: When you work in Western Australia, how can people from other states, you know, rehabilitation people and so on, who work in this space, how can they connect with your work?

Tim McLennan: It's a, it's a great question. We are fortunate here in Western Australia that the hospitals have realized that the role of the rehabilitation engineer, and we have a few more over here than many of the other states. A lot of the, a lot of my role would be pushed more into the private sector. And the NDIS is, is trying to foster these kind of services to make it available to people in other states.

But certainly I, I can give my email address. If you look on the Churchill Trust website which I think is churchilltrust.com.au and search for Tim McLennan on assistive technology, my contact details should be there. Happy to take emails and and calls and talk to anyone who is interested in finding out how any of my work can help or can be replicated in other, other places in Australia.

Scarlet Bennett: That's fabulous, thanks Tim. And what about if there are listeners who have a need for assistive assistive technology themselves, they've got limited resources, what do they need to do to tap into this network?

Tim McLennan: Yeah. This is always a, a big question. And the NDIS to a large extent is, is trying to solve this issue. Not everyone unfortunately, is eligible and there's still a few people falling between the gaps. But the biggest, I guess the biggest chance of success is if someone is able to be a strong advocate themselves or find someone to assist them in, in their advocacy, to basically contact health services and ask questions as to, to where might I be able to find someone who can, can help here.

There are different different organizations for, for different conditions that can help things like the Motor Neurons Disease Association. Each state has their own, who have got some great resources in terms of care advisors and advocates who can help link you up with the services and help find the needs that you are after.

Otherwise, there's a number of good advocate or, or sort of user groups. AppChat is, is one on Facebook that I'm aware of that's, it's really good to to be able to speak with other people who are using similar assistive technology, find out what, what works for them and how they got it as well. Cause yeah, unfortunately, often it's, it's word of mouth to, to find the right person who can get you linked into the right services.

Scarlet Bennett: That's really helpful. Thank you so much, Tim, and thank you again for joining us on the Wayfinder podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk with you today, fascinated by the work you do and look forward to seeing how or hearing how that demo site turns out once you get it up and running.

Tim McLennan: Thank you. Looking forward to having it finished and running.

Scarlet Bennett: Fabulous. And just lastly on that, what's the timeframe for it, Tim? Do you have a sense of how long it'll take?

Tim McLennan: Our plan is to have it at least minimally operating within the next sort of five to six months. So we should have that, the first lot of patients running through it this year.

Scarlet Bennett: Wonderful. That's an ambitious agenda and we all look forward to seeing it come to fruition. Thank you again, Tim. Tim McLennan, thanks for joining us today.

Yellow Edge: Thank you for listening to the Wayfinder podcast. For more information on yellowed and our services, including professional development, coaching, strategic support, mediation, and venue hire. Visit yellowedge.com.au. For more information on the Winston Churchill Trust, visit churchilltrust.com.au.