Theratrak - supporting kids with home therapy programs created by Occupational Therapist Laura Simmons
Laura Simmons and Dr Louise Metcalf at the SheStarts 3 Demo Day 2019
There are many organisations that are focused on making therapy more accessible for children. And in Australia, one of those organisations is Theratrak, founded by Laura Simmons.
We met Laura through the SheStarts accelerator program for female founders of tech startups. Laura was selected into the 2018 cohort while Gheorg founder Dr Louise Metcalf was selected into the 2019 cohort.
Laura is a qualified Occupational Therapist (OT) who is focused on supporting children and families with a range of disabilities.
After noticing barriers to complete prescribed home therapy programs, Laura realised there had to be a better way to support kids and families to complete their daily exercises, beyond their take-home piece of paper.
We’re excited to announce that in August 2020, one of the breathing exercises featured on the Gheorg app is now available as a bonus exercise in the Theratrak app! Therapists and allied health professionals can use Theratrak to prescribe home therapy programs and they can select Gheorg’s Big Belly Breath breathing exercise to empower kids with the skills to feel calm.
Supporting kids with home therapy programs
Dr Louise and Laura are doing a Facebook Live on How to best support kids with home therapy on Tuesday 27th October at 11am!
Click attending here on Facebook to join us on the day.
Learn more about Laura and Theratrak below.
How does Theratrak support kids and families?
Theratrak is a digital platform that enables allied health therapists to prescribe and then track custom therapy home programs for children and families accessing early intervention supports.
For Therapists
Therapists use Theratrak as a tool in sessions to capture and digitise meaningful information from therapy sessions. These could be photos or videos of the child completing the activity and then therapists send these activities via our secure platform to the parent so parents can easily keep track of what activities their child should be doing at home.
Theratrak currently has around 200 preloaded paediatric occupational therapy activities, however as OT crosses so many blurred lines with other therapies, we have emotional regulation, social skills and motor skills on the platform already as well.
What is really unique about Theratrak is that it can also be customised by therapists using the platform. This means Theratrak can be used for niche therapies or it can fit any allied health professional regardless of their discipline.
For Parents
Parents use our mobile app at home. Parents receive gentle reminders throughout the week to support their kids to stay on track by ticking off activities as they complete them. The app helps parents keep track of their child’s exercises and their progress, and their therapists are aware of how much practice kids are able to do at home. This clarity supports the clinician to make the best decisions for treatment. It also saves clinicians a lot of time so they can focus on getting the most out of the session rather than recapping how much at home activities were done.
How are you working within the health industry to support children's development?
Occupational therapists regularly co-treat with other therapists, depending on the child's goals and where they are at in the therapy process.
I love working as a multidisciplinary team. I believe as a team you can support the family and the child in so many more ways.
For example speech pathology, occupational therapy and psychology therapy is a common mix I often see with the children I treat. Speech pathology may support the child to learn how to speak, while psychology may support the parents with behaviour strategies, and then the Occupational Therapist works at the cross-section on play skills or social skills and how to implement these in functional settings.
What do you want Theratrak to become in future?
Theratrak is on its way to becoming everything I ever wanted in a therapy tool - which I'm so excited about!
We are in the process right now of building out the multidisciplinary function of Theratrak. This expansion means that multidisciplinary care teams will be able to work together better to support one child. The teams will be able to communicate easily and effectively about treatments they prescribe which prevents confusion and reduces time spent sharing updates across the team.
In the future, we are looking to further develop Theratrak's feedback loop, so that we can start to track the effectiveness of treatments against diagnosis, clinical goals and interests. When we do this, we can then use Theratrak's data set and AI. Together data and AI have the potential to create an incredible decision pathway for therapists. There is a workforce shortage of allied health workers around the world and with this matching algorithm, we can support more families to access early intervention and then the possibility for those kids to lead confident, independent and fulfilling lives is increased exponentially.
How can health professionals better support families who see a range of therapies or health treatments?
Creating a central place to communicate is key. Parents are overwhelmed as it is being parents - and if they then have to work on factors like anxiety management or behaviour management, that in itself can become a full-time job.
Creating safe spaces that are easy for parents to communicate and for all health professionals to work together to support the child and family is key.
I also think it’s important to not over-educate - and I fall into this trap all the time. Figuring out how to communicate key pieces of information without overwhelming parents is a tricky balance. But it's so important because an in-control parent is much more effective than one who has been bombarded with too much information that they don’t know how or what to implement.
What have you noticed about being an Occupational Therapists and kids' relationship with anxiety?
Anxiety is such a tough one for little humans. They are still learning how they fit into the world and then when they have big worries, the little things can seem really tough.
As an Occupational Therapist, we almost always work really closely with psychologists when anxiety is at play.
Often children with anxiety can also have heightened sensory processing systems meaning they notice more than others and find it hard to regulate their central nervous system.
We tend to work with psychologists who may have implemented some behavioural strategies to co-treat with sensory regulation strategies to manage emotions and the physical response.
I think over the last 10 years anxiety has become a much more widely accepted term. There's not as much stigma around being anxious or having anxiety - especially with boys. I see parents who are more emotionally aware and aware of the importance of mental health that they are keen to teach their kids the right skills from early ages which is fantastic to see.
Laura Simmons, CEO & Founder of Theratrak
This post was an interview with guest:
Laura Simmons, CEO & Founder of Theratrak
Laura Simmons is a passionate paediatric occupational therapist, helping families and working with children living with range of disabilities. Laura has worked in the private health sector for over 5 years, and in this time has noticed a distinct lack of innovative technology solutions targeting the ongoing care of clients outside of direct therapy and how this is impacting the client’s overall treatment.