March is a mixed-up type of month. One day it is snowing, the next day the temperature will reach up into the 60’s. Another day it will be windy with gray clouds quickly scraping across the sky and the following day it will be calm and sunny with the color of sky-blue as far as the eye can see. Keeping with the theme of differences, the following items have little in common except the wonderful ways each item can help people.

The first is the LOGAN® PROXTALKER® communication device. This device is super easy to use, real fun for the user, and is a wonderful learning device for those who have trouble verbalizing words or have difficulty in learning how to string words together to form a sentence. This is not a child’s toy but a real learning device for children and adults to communicate more effectively, and for long-term cognitive communication learning.

The LOGAN® PROXTALKER® was designed by Glen Dobbs and Kevin Miller who were looking for a way to assist Logan, Glen’s son who has autism, to be able to perform or more easily experience the benefits of a better verbal output of what he was thinking. Dobbs and Miller found that the way to do this was by combining pictures and images with corresponding verbal words. This is accomplished with images or photos placed on plastic tags that are radio-frequency identification devices that can record the word(s) of the image on it. A tag is chosen from a growing number of picture/word tags that utilize RFID technology to retrieve the stored vocabulary sound tags that produce real-voiced words. It is then placed on the Proxtalker device with other placed tags on the five location buttons, enabling a sequence of tags to be played, forming a sentence.

The innovative Proxtalker comes with a pre-set selection of photos, text, symbols, and objects of reference tags with the corresponding words. By using an in-built microphone, the user, therapist or caregiver can create a personal eight second recording of words or images on blank RFID tags, with enough IGB memory to create up to 30,000 sound tags to allow the user to have an ever expanding vocabulary.  View the video below from Glen Dobbs for more information about the LOGAN® PROXTALKER®. 

The month of March also ushers in the beginning of spring, and with spring flowers also comes spring allergens. The Austin Air HealthMate air purifier allows people to be able to escape the allergen filled sky of a spring day and go into a clean-air environment for health and comfort. Providing four stages of intense, sixty square feet of True HEPA filter media filtration, the HealthMate will rid the air of bacteria, allergens, odors, viruses, chemical vapors and smoke, significantly improving the air quality in a medium to large-sized room.

Helping to reduce indoor air pollutants that trigger asthma, allergies and other respiratory problems, this no-nonsense air purifier should be wearing a blue collar because it works so hard at what it does best; remove large amounts of air-borne containments with simple and complete efficiency. Austin Air HealthMate air cleaners are the number one choice of physicians and specialists, and the popular HealthMate line of air purifiers are hard at work cleaning the air of homes, facilities and offices around the world.

Most injuries caused by winter slips and falls on the ice and snow are now mending and like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon in the springtime, once broken bones and tendon tears are coming out from their immobilizers and are ready for some rehabilitation. A good, low impact rehab device is the AquaGaiter™ underwater treadmill that combines traditional muscle building and toning treadmill training with the natural buoyancy and resistance properties of aquatic therapy or hydrotherapy. The AquaGaiter offers a rigorous cardiovascular workout but with reduced stress and impact on joints and injured muscles. Aquatic therapy offers a great environment to create a low impact stretching and exercise recovery or rehabilitation program by using the natural mild resistance and gravity free environment of water.

A perfect addition to rehabilitation, conditioning or wellness facilities, the AquaGaiter is ideal for people who have experienced back or neck pain, hip, ankle or knee problems, pregnant women and recovering orthopedic surgery patients. Take a standard swimming pool, add the AquaGaiter to it, and Voila! You have created a pain-free way for the injured, obese and elderly to exercise and rehabilitate without the stress and strain on the joints and muscles.

So be it communicating better, breathing easier, or rehabbing with less pain and more results, the darkness of the Ides of March can be forgotten and the health and happiness of spring can now begin.

Bill Stock
Executive Editor,
Content & Social Media Services