INAIL Center of Applied Research on Rehabilitation Engineering - Observatory on Rehabilitation Bio-Engineering.

Daniela Canali, Luca Odetti, Eugenio Guglielmelli
Centro INAIL RTR Centro di Ricerca Applicata in Bioingegneria della Riabilitazione
Via della Vetraia, 7 - 55049 Viareggio (Italy)
d.canali@mail-arts.sssup.it

The INAIL Center of Applied Research on Rehabilitation Engineering is born from a joint initiative between INAIL and the Scuola Superiore di Studi Sant'Anna, with the goal to create a scientific pole for applied research on motor rehabilitation engineering. Among the research areas there is the Observatory on Rehabilitation Bio-Engineering, a cross-theme service of the Center, which role is to acquire, manage and provide information related to the specific research areas: functional recovery, functional replacement, technological devices, functional evaluation, training. The main task of the Observatory is the Documentation Service which makes available structured information, as result of the systematical work of collection, analysis, synthesis and organization of the information flows external to INAIL  and to the Center. Currently the following services have been activated at the Center: Database of traditional INAIL RTR Center library resources, with indexing and bibliographic cataloguing; Reference service on demand for INAIL internal personnel; Database of electronic resources related to different sectors of the Rehabilitation Research.
The Observatory tasks are structured in five sections: Interface with Information Delivery function, with privileged and differential access for INAIL structures; integrated archive of publications (printed, digital, audiovisual and multimedia) and Internet resources with monitoring of the information worldwide produced in this sector of interest; telematic window from/to forums, mailing lists and newsletter about Rehabilitation; support to cooperative work, by protected areas management, accessible via web, for document exchange (BSCW); training and continuous learning by Web-based training and learning (WebCT). For the exploitation of the Observatory services five user profiles have been defined from the generic external users to the INAIL RTR internal users. The Observatory manages the information flows related to the local and remote access resources, by a dynamic interaction between information producers and consumers. The training section has the goal to provide courses of web-based Open Distance Learning for INAIL personnel and users, oriented to social and work reintegration of the disabled people.