Photo of Maria Andreassen

Maria Andreassen

Associate Professor

Since 2016, I am a PhD student at the Department of Occupational Therapy and I am working in the project "Digital support in cases of cognitive disability". I also work as a teacher at the Occupational Therapy programme.

Digital support for cognitive disabilities

Cognitive disabilities can create difficulties for an individual to take initiative, to plan, structure and organise everyday life, as well as remember to do activities that have been planned. Persons with cognitive disabilities can have a reduced ability to live an independent everyday life. 
 

Today's society expects us to be able to plan and organise our everyday lives and coordinate our own time with others, this can lead to some individuals’ need of a digital support. Digital support can be an opportunity to give the individual greater independence and the ability to act. The purpose of the planned study is to find out how effective an interactive digital support with a reminder is for individuals with cognitive disabilities in improving their occupational performance, and in increasing their quality of life. The project has a randomised controlled trail design, with baseline assessment and follow-up after 2 and 6 months. Individuals with cognitive disabilities getting rehabilitation of occupational therapists in primary care will be included in the project. 

The project will use a new digital support that provides support for people in remembering activities and planning their everyday life. This could result that the digitalisation of our everyday environment are being available to more groups in society. 

RemindMe is a sub-project on the healthcare research programme "Supporting Self Care by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for older people with long term conditions". 

Teaching occupational therapists

I teach on the Occupational Therapy programme and mostly in courses about Elderly people with disabilities. I am also involved in different educational activities where students are training practical skills at Clinicum in Norrköping.
 
I also supervise students in doing their thesis at a Bachelor degree. 

Publications

2023

Johannes Österholm, Maria Andreassen, Martha Gustavsson, Åsa Larsson Ranada (2023) Older people's experiences of visiting social day centres: The importance of doing and being for health and well-being Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, Vol. 30, p. 76-85 Continue to DOI
Charlotte Wåhlin, Sebastian Buck, Jan Sandqvist, Paul Enthoven, Jenni Fock, Maria Andreassen, Emma Nilsing Strid (2023) Evaluation of the implementation and effectiveness of a multifactorial intervention strategy for safe patient handling and movement in the healthcare sector: a study protocol of a cluster randomised controlled trial BMJ Open, Vol. 13, Article e067693 Continue to DOI

2022

Maria Andreassen, Henrik Danielsson, Helena Hemmingsson, Tiny Jaarsma (2022) An interactive digital calendar with mobile phone reminders (RemindMe) for people with cognitive impairment: a pilot randomized controlled trial Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, Vol. 29, p. 270-281 Continue to DOI

2021

Maria Andreassen (2021) Digital support for people with cognitive impairment: An intervention to increase the occupational performance in everyday life

2020

Maria Andreassen, Helena Hemmingsson, Inga-Lill Boman, Henrik Danielsson, Tiny Jaarsma (2020) Feasibility of an Intervention for Patients with Cognitive Impairment Using an Interactive Digital Calendar with Mobile Phone Reminders (RemindMe) to Improve the Performance of Activities in Everyday Life International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 17, Article 2222 Continue to DOI

Research

Collaboration with researchers at Linköping University