The problem this solves
After a serious injury the return-to-work conversation stalls on a question nobody can answer: what is this person actually capable of now?
The honest answer is that nobody knows, including the patient, because there is no safe way to find out. A construction site will not hand a hard hat to someone eight months post-TBI to see how they handle noise and balance. A commercial kitchen will not let someone with a spinal cord injury test adaptive prep work during a dinner service. An employer will not offer a trial shift to find out whether the stamina holds.
So the assessment defaults to guesswork, or to a paper evaluation that measures the wrong things and produces a recommendation nobody has much confidence in.
What we do instead
Immersive simulation of real work environments, with graduated difficulty and performance data captured throughout. Participants try tasks in a setting where failure costs nothing and nobody is watching to judge.
- A wide catalogue of simulated work environments across industries
- Difficulty calibrated to current capacity, progressing as tolerance builds
- Data captured on task performance, stamina, error patterns, and recovery time
- A written summary suitable for a rehabilitation counselor or an adjuster
- Direct coordination with Michigan Rehabilitation Services
Who this is built for
- 1Return-to-work is being considered but nobody is sure what is realistic, including the person themselves.
- 2The disability changed what is possible and the previous occupation may no longer be viable, so the live question is what else might be.
- 3Documented capacity is needed by a rehabilitation counselor, adjuster, or case manager to justify the next step in a plan.
Industries covered
Construction, healthcare support, food service, retail, warehouse and logistics, manufacturing, office and clerical, automotive repair, landscaping, and a long tail beyond those. If a participant has a specific occupation in mind we can usually simulate something close enough to produce a useful read on it.
How it runs
An initial assessment covering current function, work history, and interests, which determines which environments are worth trying first. Then a series of sessions building a performance picture across those environments. Then a written report with findings and recommended next steps.
Some participants reach useful clarity in four to six sessions. Others work through the platform over several months, particularly where cognitive rehabilitation is running in parallel and capacity is still improving. The pace follows the person rather than a fixed program length.
Why the evidence matters
Two audiences use the report and they use it differently.
For the participant, it converts an abstract and frightening question into something concrete. Seeing yourself complete a shift’s worth of tasks in a simulated warehouse, with the data to confirm it, changes the internal conversation from whether you can work at all to which kind of work fits.
For the counselor or adjuster, it replaces opinion with a data series. Funding decisions about retraining, placement support, or continued benefits are considerably easier to justify against measured performance than against a narrative assessment.
Running it alongside rehabilitation
Vocational assessment is frequently combined with cognitive rehabilitation, and the sequencing is deliberate. Capacity often improves while the vocational picture is being built, which means an assessment done at month three and an assessment done at month nine can produce genuinely different answers.
Running both in parallel lets the vocational plan track the recovery rather than being fixed against a snapshot that is already out of date by the time anyone acts on it.
Funding
- Michigan Rehabilitation Services
- Workers compensation, for work-related injury
- Michigan No-Fault auto insurance, for accident-related disability
- Medicaid waivers in some circumstances
- Private pay and employer-sponsored programs
We coordinate directly with counselors and adjusters and produce the documentation they require.
What the report contains
The written summary is the deliverable, and it is built to be usable by somebody who was not in the room.
- Performance across each environment attempted, with the raw measures rather than a grade
- Stamina profile: how long tasks were sustained and how performance changed across a session
- Error patterns, which frequently matter more than error rate. Errors clustering after forty minutes tell a different story than errors distributed evenly
- Recovery time between tasks
- Participant-reported experience, because how work felt is a genuine input into whether it is sustainable
- Recommended next steps, framed as options rather than a single verdict
What it does not claim
The report does not certify that somebody can hold a particular job, and any assessment claiming that is overreaching. Simulation cannot capture a difficult supervisor, an unpredictable commute, or a bad week. What it does establish is a defensible floor: tasks demonstrably completed, under observation, with the data to support it.
That floor is what a counselor or an adjuster can act on, and it is considerably more than the guesswork it replaces.
Vocational assessment questions
No. We work alongside MRS. Think of this as the stage before placement, where the question is what is realistic rather than which job to apply for.
It varies. Four to six sessions produce meaningful clarity for some participants. Others use the platform across several months, particularly when cognitive rehabilitation is running in parallel.
Often yes. The platform calibrates across a wide range of ability levels. We assess suitability during the initial evaluation and will tell you if it is not appropriate.
Usually not, once screening is complete. We rule out severe vestibular issues and certain seizure histories, then introduce it gradually.
That is not our function. We produce the capacity evidence that makes placement decisions realistic. Placement itself runs through MRS or your workers compensation vocational counselor, and we hand off directly to them.