New robotic technologies help developing increasingly advanced tools for rehabilitation of people with reduced motor functions. But which robotic technology is best suited to treat an individual disease based on the patient’s need and age? The answer to this question comes from the Fit for Medical Robotics (Fit4MedRob) project, coordinated by the National Research Council (CNR) and the Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies in Pisa, which aims to revolutionize current rehabilitation and assistance models for patients of all ages through the development of new bionic and biorobotic digital technologies, as well as innovative paradigms capable of exploiting these technologies in all phases of the rehabilitation process, from prevention to home care in the chronic phase.
Supported by the Italian Government under the National Plan for Complementary Investments to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NNRP), Fit4MedRob has received €126 million of overall funding and brings together 25 partners: 11 Universities and research centres, 11 IRCCS and clinical centres and 3 industrial entities. For the first time in Italy, research on advanced technologies for rehabilitation and cure synergistically has involved engineers and clinicians in over 50 different studies with over 2,000 patients.
Today, robots for rehabilitation, augmented and virtual reality systems, used to facilitate interaction with technology, are the subject of advanced research, but they are experimentally used only at a few healthcare facilities. This situation has not allowed, so far, to analyse these technologies in a systematic way.
One year after its launch, researchers showed the early project results and some of the new technologies that will be located in the healthcare facilities, thus allowing to enter a new phase of robotic medicine focused on individuals.
According to Loredana Zollo, full Professor of Bioengineering and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, this project helped moving from a fragmented context, characterized by many small clinical studies distributed across the national territory with small numbers of patients, to a new scenario characterized by a synergistic and collaborative vision where unity is strength.
“The synergy that has been created between the partners is the real driving force of a project that has set itself an ambitious objective: to imprint a decisive change of direction on current rehabilitation and care models aimed at patients of all ages through the use of new robotic technologies and digital,” said Christian Cipriani, full Professor of bioingindustrial engineering of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and scientific director of the project. “In this first year of activity, the broad public-private partnership, led by the National Research Council, has brought together committed scholars to put research and technology at the service of the well-being of humanity.”
The results of this project will have, in the future, an important impact on the efficiency of the healthcare system and will allow resources to be effectively invested in robotic and rehabilitation equipment, allowing for greater diffusion of these technologies throughout the country with benefits for the health of the entire population.
Read also Robotic rehabilitation, a survey on patients’ needs launched within the Fit4MedRob project.
