Towards a tailored monitoring and treatment tool for at-home stroke rehabilitation

Project summary

Our project contributes to the future development and application of “tailor-made” at-home rehabilitation systems. For this, a consortium has been set up with academic partners (medicine, industrial design and health policy & management), a clinical partner, and two private partners.

A stroke often has a major impact on patients. Exercising as much as possible and exercises that suit the patient are important for a good recovery. However, that happens too little. In the future, providing guided exercise will become more difficult. Independent training at home will become even more important and wearable technology can play an important role here. But this transition of treatment has major challenges. Someone who has had a stroke will only start exercising at home if the technology used matches his or her rehabilitation goals, capabilities, wishes and living situation. A ‘one design for all’ approach will not work and may also be extra disadvantageous for already vulnerable people.

The aim of the project is to develop knowledge that contributes to the development and application of a rehabilitation system that motivates everyone; a rehabilitation system at home and for all types of people. In this project, we take arm-hand rehabilitation after a stroke as our starting point. The knowledge we will develop focuses on 1) being able to measure a person’s ability to use the arm at home; 2) giving the patient precise and continuous feedback about movements (such as reaching, grasping) that are a training goal for them, and 3) designing a device so that everyone will start and continue to use it and so that it works well for everyone.

The knowledge developed will facilitate the future transition to rehabilitation treatment at home. With the assistance of a therapist only when necessary. The system will ultimately contribute to better and more affordable rehabilitation treatment.