The @tend system: a tool for enhanced productivity for clients with attention deficit
Attention deficit may have multiple underlying causes—whether developmental, such as ADHD, or acquired due to injury or illness, including traumatic brain injury (TBI) or postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) in older adults following surgery and anesthesia.
Regardless of the cause, attention deficit often leads to a significant decline in performance and productivity.
Whatever its cause, attention deficit leads to significant reduction in performance and productivity.
It is well established that effective external monitoring and thereafter self-monitoring of performance and attention throughout the task keep the client on the task, and promote major improvement in performance and productivity.
Defining clear, measurable operational goals
Establishing monitoring checkpoints, either external or self-directed, often supported by preset timers
Generating real-time recommendations based on the underlying cause of performance changes (e.g., attention lapses or elevated stress)
Traditionally, this process — including both external monitoring and training in self-monitoring — is guided by licensed professionals, such as occupational therapists or remedial educators. While this method is highly effective, it often requires multiple sessions and may be less accessible or affordable for many patients.
To enable effective monitoring of attention and performance, the @tend system integrates three major components of monitoring:
1. Defining clear operational goals:
Each task begins with a measurable objective — for example, “solve three math exercises within five minutes.” This ensures the task is well-defined and performance can be objectively assessed.
2. Setting monitoring checkpoints:
At predetermined intervals, a timer is triggered and the client is prompted to self-assess their performance as:
• Moderate – as expected
• Good – significantly better than expected
• Lacking – significantly below expectations
3. Deriving real-time recommendations according to identified barriers:
From the dynamics of the attention marker we identify whether the client faced a mental barrier during the task thus far, and whether it was a cognitive barrier of attention deficit, or an emotional (affective) barrier that may have caused difficulties in attention due to stress.
We combine the identified barrier (cognitive-attentive or emotional), or lack of barrier, with the client’s reported performance to generate real-time, personalized recommendations. These recommendations are delivered verbally to the client during the task.
The system then monitors the client’s response to evaluate how effective the recommendation was in practice. Over time, this enables the system to prioritize the most impactful strategies tailored to each individual.
Session recordings are sent by the client to the therapist, who reviews them asynchronously and provides personalized feedback for improvement.
Each review typically takes only 5–10 minutes, enabling therapists to assess significantly more practice within each working hour — improving efficiency without compromising quality.
Once the client becomes familiar with using the @tend system to enhance focus and performance, the next phase begins: learning to self-monitor.
This progression involves:
Increasing independence — the client gradually uses @tend with reduced therapist support.
Delayed prompts — timer activations are gradually postponed to encourage sustained attention and self-regulation.
Full autonomy — the ultimate goal is for the client to apply the learned self-monitoring strategies effectively, even without the system.
To explore whether @tend is suitable for your needs — whether for clinical practice or individual use — please fill out the form below.
Note that use of the system requires guidance from a trained professional (e.g., an occupational therapist or remedial teacher). This can be your own therapist or one from our network. Since guidance is provided remotely and offline, in-person sessions are rarely necessary unless otherwise agreed upon.
In some cases, particularly following brain injury or neurological illness, more intensive therapist involvement may be required.
For these situations, we recommend starting with the @tend-train system — a structured program that offers pre-designed cognitive exercises (e.g., memory tasks) along with real-time verbal feedback. This helps clients build the ability to recognize and overcome both cognitive and emotional attention barriers before transitioning to the standard @tend platform.
The system combines the identified barriers and performance to provide online (verbal and visual) recommendations, which could also be personalized.
The client advances among the @tend-train system levels of difficulty.
Once the client masters the tighter use of feedback and completes successfully the levels of the @tend-train system, it might be possible to use the basic @tend system for external monitoring of daily client’s tasks and thereafter for learning self-monitoring in these tasks.
Ready to take control of your focus? Leave your details and we’ll get you started with @tend.
