Course Organizers:
Paolo Bonato, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School
Joel Stein, M.D., Harvard Medical School

Tuesday, August 29, 2006: 8.30 AM-5.30 PM

To register for this course, please click on the website http://cme.med.harvard.edu/courses/technology

The objective of the one-day course entitled “The Impact of Technology on Stroke Rehabilitation” is to provide clinicians and researchers with an interest in stroke rehabilitation with an up-to-date overview of the tools that researchers have recently made available to enhance clinical management and intervention in patients after a stroke. Considerable emphasis will be put on presenting the role of technology in stroke rehabilitation.

This initiative is joint effort of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

Program Description

The course is organized in three parts:

The first three lectures aim at providing attendees with information regarding clinical interventions in stroke rehabilitation as per current clinical practice and experimental therapeutic techniques that have been recently introduced in the clinical setting.  Dr Stein will give a general overview on stroke rehabilitation.  Dr Wolf and Dr Chae will lecture on the use of constraint induced movement therapy and electrical stimulation in stroke rehabilitation respectively.  These are techniques that have gained the attention of clinicians in the past few years and have been a source of debate in the clinical and scientific community.

Dr Jette and Dr Bonato will give the lectures in the next group of talks.  The objective of these talks is to provide the audience with information regarding new tools to gather data concerning the effectiveness of clinical interventions.  Dr Jette will focus on survey-based methods, while Dr Bonato will describe the use of miniature, wearable sensing technology to collect movement data in the home and community settings.

Finally, three talks will be devoted to presentation of research projects that rely on advanced technologies to enhance stroke rehabilitation.  Dr Volpe will summarize his team’s experience with the use of robotics to foster motor recovery of upper extremity control.  Dr Reinkensmeyer will describe recent advances in orthotics and mobility assistive devices that have been achieved by relying on robotics.  Finally, Dr Deutsch will present the results of her group in utilizing virtual reality to enhance motor retraining in patients after a stroke. 

Who Should Attend?

The course is designed in order to be suitable for physiatrists, physical therapists, and biomedical engineers with an interest in stroke rehabilitation.

Expected Benefits

The material presented in the lectures will allow clinicians and researchers to assess the impact of technology on stroke rehabilitation and make informed decisions about the adoption of technology in clinical practice as well as identify areas that need significant research work but promise to significantly impact stroke rehabilitation in the near future.

Tentative Schedule:

  9:15 am An overview of stroke rehabilitation - Joel Stein, MD
10:00 am New paradigms in stroke rehabilitation - Steve Wolf, PhD, FAPTA
10:45 am BREAK 11:15 am Therapeutic electrical stimulation after stroke - John Chae, MD 12:00 pm Gathering outcome measures at the point of care - Alan Jette, PhD, MPH 12:45 pm LUNCH  1:45 pm Monitoring patients using wearable technology - Paolo Bonato, PhD  2:30 pm Upper-extremity motor retraining via robotics - Bruce Volpe, MD  3:15 pm BREAK  3:45 pm How robotics will reshape mobility in the next decade – David Reinkensmeyer, PhD  4:30 pm Virtual reality and stroke rehabilitation - Judy Deutsch, PhD, PT  5:15 pm Conclusion