Center of Research Excellence SPRINT
In a rapidly ageing society as in the Netherlands, increasing effort is necessary to help the elderly to maintain a high level of independent functioning and full participation in society (healthy ageing). When human cognitive capabilities and mobility capacities are impaired, people will loose their independent functioning and will require an increasing amount of medical and caring help.
The Center of Research Excellence SPRINT (Smart mobility devices with improved Patient pRosthesis INTeraction) is founded to develop new intelligent mobility devices that will prevent deterioration and restore mobility.
SPRINT will focus on three stages of mobility support, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.
- For prevention intelligent balance and physical condition training devices for elderly will be developed.
- For treatment intelligent prostheses, orthoses and wheelchairs will be developed.
- To optimize the rehabilitation process with the device, home training protocols will be developed that place individual patients and their needs at the focal point.
Both prevention and training protocols will be based on Discovery Learning principles. This means using the movement solutions which are automatically generated by the patient and not given by the therapist. Serious gaming and embedded cognition of the device will be used in the development of discovery learning. This results in an innovative and effective training for the home situation. Research already showed that training in the home situation is more effective than training in the Rehabilitation Center.
All three stages will be monitored from a distance via tele-monitoring. Senso-motor information of the patient-device interaction will be uploaded to the pc of the patient. The patient can change settings for better mobility. Next to the senso-motor information, also training and physical data are uploaded. Both during and after the training, the professional (doctor and physiotherapist) can give interactive feedback. This monitoring is less time-consuming and more effective than visits to the doctor and the physiotherapist.
