Pathways through stroke rehab - and introducing a new NOVELL team member: Juan Pablo (JP) Saa

We’re very pleased to welcome a new member to the NOVELL Redesign team: Dr Juan Pablo (JP) Saa.

JP is a rehabilitation professional with a background in occupational therapy and public health. JP is particularly interested in improving stroke prevention and rehabilitation through development and implementation of policy at the hospital and community level. His recent research focus has been on mapping the trajectory of cognitive recovery after stroke, giving a clearer picture of the processes involved in this part of the rehabilitation journey. As you can see from the image opposite, JP is also a keen percussionist, and enjoys jogging and playing table tennis in his spare time.

JP is joining the NOVELL team to help us map out the ‘pathways’ or ‘journeys’ that people who have had a stroke typically experience in Australian rehabilitation facilities. These pathways will include all of the activities and events that tend to happen from admission to discharge, including a detailed description of a ‘day in the life’ of a stroke survivor in rehabilitation. The pathways will include information about who is involved at each stage of the journey (nurses, physios, family, etc.), the equipment and/or technology that is used to support the journey, and the location(s) where each activity typically takes place.

One of the overarching aims of NOVELL is to optimise stroke rehabilitation, and understanding the current pathway(s) stroke survivors take is a critical part of this optimisation. Once we understand the journey through rehabilitation, we can model and predict the impact of changes to this pathway — including changes to the clinical program and changes to the physical space.

JP will be using Value-Focused Process Engineering to create the pathway, a method championed by one of NOVELL’s lead investigators, Prof Leonid Churilov. Leonid and his colleagues have previously used this method to investigate clinical processes in paediatric stroke, as well as to optimise a wide range of processes in both clinical and industrial settings.

We’ll be sure to keep you updated on the NOVELL website as the pathways are developed. You can sign up via our Resources page to make sure you keep in the loop and have early access to any outputs.