TY - JOUR PY - 2024// TI - Towards a knowledge-based decision support system to foster the return to work of wheelchair users JO - Computational and structural biotechnology journal A1 - Spoladore, Daniele A1 - Negri, Luca A1 - Arlati, Sara A1 - Mahroo, Atieh A1 - Fossati, Margherita A1 - Biffi, Emilia A1 - Davalli, Angelo A1 - Trombetta, Alberto A1 - Sacco, Marco SP - 374 EP - 392 VL - 24 IS - N2 - Accidents at work may force workers to face abrupt changes in their daily life: one of the most impactful accident cases consists of the worker remaining in a wheelchair. Return To Work (RTW) of wheelchair users in their working age is still challenging, encompassing the expertise of clinical and rehabilitation personnel and social workers to match the workers' residual capabilities with job requirements. This work describes a novel and prototypical knowledge-based Decision Support System (DSS) that matches workers' residual capabilities with job requirements, thus helping vocational therapists and clinical personnel in the RTW decision-making process for WUs. The DSS leverages expert knowledge in the form of ontologies to represent the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). These taxonomies enable both workers' health conditions and job requirements formalization, which are processed to assess the suitability of a job depending on a worker's condition. Consequently, the DSS suggests a list of jobs a wheelchair user can still perform, exploiting his/her residual abilities at their best. The manuscript describes the theoretical approach and technological foundations of such DSS, illustrating its development, its output metric, and application. The developed solution was tested with real wheelchair users' health conditions provided by the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work. The feasibility of an approach based on objective data was thus demonstrated, providing a novel point of view in the critical process of decision-making during RTW.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 2001-0370 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2024.05.013 ID - ref1 ER -