Neuro-X seminar: Prof Roger Gassert - Unlocking the Full Potential of Robot-Assisted Therapy Along the Continuum of Care

Robot-assisted sensorimotor therapy after neurological injury bears great potential to complement conventional approaches, allowing for earlier, more diverse and intensive therapy, reducing the burden on therapists and providing advanced assessments from integrated measures. However, robotic systems currently used in clinical practice are mostly complex, limited in their usability, and therefore require trained therapists for setup and supervision, greatly limiting their potential impact.

In this talk I will reflect on these challenges based on my experience as a researcher, and also as a patient having undergone seven months of intensive neurorehabilitation. I will illustrate our efforts towards unlocking the full potential of robot-assisted therapy along the continuum of care, with the aim of greatly increasing therapy dose. Our approach builds on a haptic platform to train hand function, providing rich neurocognitive exercises that continuously adapt based on integrated sensorimotor assessments. The platform is introduced to patients in the clinic, in a supervised manner during standard therapy sessions. In a recent study in a clinical setting, we were able to demonstrate that stroke patients could transition from fully supervised to minimally supervised and finally to fully unsupervised therapy. The intervention lead to a meaningful increase in therapy dose with positive user experience. Currently, we are following the same protocol with patients ultimately taking the robotic platform to their home, to continue unsupervised therapy, with the aim of further increasing independence.

Roger Gassert is Professor of Rehabilitation Engineering at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on the development and clinical validation of technologies to relieve sensorimotor impairments in neurological disorders such as stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. He is Vice-Chair of the ETH Competence Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering and Science, Vice-President of the Strategic Council of CYBATHLON, President of the Swiss Foundation Access for All, and Swiss contact person of the Association for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe (AAATE). He is also co-founder of Auxivo, an ETH spin-off that develops wearable exoskeletons to assist workers with physically demanding tasks.