Sociocultural Factors Shaping Technology Usage

The widespread underuse and abandonment of adaptive devices is a critical issue for medicine, research, and technology development, as well as consumers and their families. It poses basic financial and ethical dilemmas. For example, competing mandates must be balanced in quality assurance between dispensing devices based on individual need, and accountability for the public costs if a device is likely to be used only a short time. The significance of these issues grows as new federal legislations direct the delivery of adaptive device technologies and as more people with disabilities from disease and injury survive to later life due to improved medical care. Our century's bright promise of medical-technology solutions to physical impairments is not yet fulfilled because our knowledge of how to implement them in individual cases remains at a more primitive stage. How can we wed the scientific advances with insights into people's utilization of these advances?