Nothing About Us Without Us: a participatory design for an Inclusive Signing Tiago Robot

The success of the interaction between the robotics community and the users of these services is an aspect of considerable importance in the drafting of the development plan of any technology. This aspect becomes even more relevant when dealing with sensitive services and issues such as those related to interaction with specific subgroups of any population. Over the years, there have been few successes in integrating and proposing technologies related to deafness and sign language. Instead, in this paper, we propose an account of successful interaction between a signatory robot and the Italian deaf community, which occurred during the Smart City Robotics Challenge (SciRoc) 2021 competition 1. Thanks to the use of a participatory design and the involvement of experts belonging to the deaf community from the early stages of the project, it was possible to create a technology that has achieved significant results in terms of acceptance by the community itself and could lead to significant results in the technology development as well

Insight from an Italian Delphi Consensus on EVAR feasibility outside the instruction for use: the SAFE EVAR Study

Background: The SAfety and FEasibility of standard EVAR outside the instruction for use (SAFE-EVAR) Study was designed to define the attitude of Italian vascular surgeons towards the use of standard endovascular repair (EVAR) for infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) outside the instruction for use (IFU) through a Delphi consensus endorsed by the Italian Society of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery (Società Italiana di Chirurgia Vascolare ed Endovascolare - SICVE). Methods: A questionnaire consisting of 26 statements was developed, validated by an 18-member Advisory Board, and then sent to 600 Italian vascular surgeons. The Delphi process was structured in three subsequent rounds which took place between April and June 2023. In the first two rounds, respondents could indicate one of the following five degrees of agreement: 1) strongly agree; 2) partially agree; 3) neither agree nor disagree; 4) partially disagree; 5) strongly disagree; while in the third round only three different choices were proposed: 1) agree; 2) neither agree nor disagree; 3) disagree. We considered the consensus reached when ≥70% of respondents agreed on one of the options. After the conclusion of each round, a report describing the percentage distribution of the answers was sent to all the participants. Results: Two-hundred-forty-four (40.6%) Italian Vascular Surgeons agreed to participate the first round of the Delphi Consensus; the second and the third rounds of the Delphi collected 230 responders (94.3% of the first-round responders). Four statements (15.4%) reached a consensus in the first rounds. Among the 22 remaining statements, one more consensus (3.8%) was achieved in the second round. Finally, seven more statements (26.9%) reached a consensus in the simplified last round. Globally, a consensus was reached for almost half of the proposed statements (46.1%). Conclusions: The relatively low consensus rate obtained in this Delphi seems to confirm the discrepancy between Guideline recommendations and daily clinical practice. The data collected could represent the source for a possible guidelines' revision and the proposal of specific Good Practice Points in all those aspects with only little evidence available