Simulation and Rehabilitation Research
Mobility is a crucial factor for disabled people and the elderly to remain independent. It improves the quality of their lives and makes them less dependent on (intensive) home care. To increase the chances of success, rehabilitation research plays an important role. Findings in rehabilitation research show that postural disturbances can accelerate the ability of disabled people to adapt to challenges in everyday life. It also shows that coordinated visual information further accelerates learning. Simulation technology can play an important role in this process. Diagnosis can be improved through “dynamic testing” by actively challenging patients with dynamic disturbances. Medical research simulators enable researchers to analyze human responses to disturbances in realistic environment and to test imporved and new assistive devices.
IDT is currently involved in the developement of a unique rehabilitation research simulator for the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. The simulator will provide a lot of possibilities and capabilities for researchers to explore new areas of rehabilitation research and therapy and to test out devices in environments that are almost not reproducible in reality.
With our experiences from this project, IDT sees many new ways to use simulation technology for the improvement of therapies and testing environments for assistive devices, offering disabled people and the elderly a better quality of life.
For information on our current projects, please go to our Projects page.
For more information on medical simulation and research, please click here