Talk:Stroke Rehab Management

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Stroke Rehab Management and Body Sensor Networks

The development of extremely small sensors holds a great promise for area of Stroke Rehabilitation. These sensors being wireless also gives tremendous flexibility and remote monitoring and therapy now becomes very possible. The level at which these emerging devices (see section on Design Aspects of Body Sensor Networks) actually are truly unbotrusive is still being determined and researched, however we can certainly say that the techniques of Stroke Rehab will change considerably over the coming 10 years. The initial research efforts on the use of body Sensors in this space focussed mainly on accelerometer based devices and EMG measurements. However with the minituatisation of microelectronic sensors, now multiple sensors are possible on a single device giving much richer data in terms of say movement (i.e. multiuple axes). The recent thrust has been to make these devices wearable and to fit in with everyday devices and become orthoses or prostheses or even embedded in a wearable garment.

There are some commercial examples of wireless body sensor networks aimed at aiding Stroke Rehab. There are also a number of academic prototype examples.

• Philips Stroke Rehabilitation Exerciser - The Philips Stroke Rehabilitation Exerciser [1] is a device being developed by Philips with input from University of Ulster, University of Bath and Sheffield Hallam University. It is a device that straps to the upper body of the patient and links wirelessly to a console thet is running programs developed by the physiotherapist. The patient looks in to a monitor and receives real time feedback on his progress and the physiotherapist is also informed of progress. It is designed to be used in the patients own home and is a very easy to use system.

• Jovanov (et al) [2] has developed a system that is aimed at home based rehabilitation of a number of condidtions and inclides motion/gait analyis also. Thi ssystem also combines physiological measumements. The team at Harvard also developed as part of the CodeBlue suite, a motin analysis sesnor system based on the Telos Mote platform for the monitoring of muscle motor activity (associated with Parkinsons Disease)

• Bonato has published an excellent overview paper [3] the current situation regarding wearable technologies in rehabilitation and cites particularly work by Gibbs and Asada and Tognetti (et al) as notable