Yeditepe University clinched the first prize in a competition with a project designed to make life easier for individuals with Cerebral Palsy and their families.
In the "Barrier-Free Cities Ideathon" organized in collaboration with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) and Bi Dünya İçerik, Yeditepe University's "TEBAR'SP Accessible Platform" project won the first prize.
The award-winning project "TEBAR'SP Accessible Platform" aims to create an early roadmap for families with Cerebral Palsy (CP) infants, competing in an ideathon dedicated to projects that facilitate the daily urban lives of disadvantaged individuals.
The project is led by Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Develi and Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Tuğçe Çil, faculty members of the Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation at Yeditepe University, along with Fzt. Benan Özkol, a specialist at Yeditepe University's Advisory and Coordination Unit for Students with Disabilities, and Yersu Deniz from the Cerebral Palsy Children Association (SERÇEV).
"Help Needed Right After Birth"
Discussing the project, Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Tuğçe Çil noted that significant improvements could be achieved with early intervention and lifelong rehabilitation tailored to the conditions, age, and socio- economic circumstances of individuals with CP. However, she mentioned that families of infants with CP struggle to access suitable education, care, and rehabilitation services due to a lack of information, communication, and guidance right from the diagnosis.
"Early and Correct Guidance is Necessary"
Elif Tuğçe Çil explained that the idea for the project emerged from the need to provide accurate guidance to individuals with CP and their parents as early as possible. "With the TEBAR'SP Accessible Platform project, we aim to enable individuals with CP and their families to find information about regional and national services, guiding them to appropriate treatment, education, care, and rehabilitation services from the early stages. Our project will create a mobile application that allows access to all this information. The app will display the services these centers provide, satisfaction rates, and comments from service users. Additionally, artificial intelligence will perform bio-psycho- social assessments of individuals, offering recommendations based on preliminary evaluation results."
Everyone Can download the App
Although it seems that individuals with CP and their families will benefit the most from the application, Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Tuğçe Çil stated that local governments, universities, private and public hospitals, rehabilitation center employees, and members of non-governmental organizations could also use the app to contribute to the lives of individuals with CP.
Highlighting the multidisciplinary collaboration, including software engineers and numerous professionals, Çil's goal was to launch the application within a year. She mentioned that the project would receive R&D, Production, and Internship Support as part of the award, with necessary support during the software development and subsequent phases provided by experts from İBB's Istanbul Informatics and Smart City Technologies (İSBAK) R&D.
Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Tuğçe Çil emphasized that the TEBAR'SP health platform is built on the foundation of multidisciplinary and innovative projects developed in previous years with strong support from the university administration. The project's success in winning the first prize at the "Barrier-Free Cities Ideathon" has boosted their motivation.