Engineering a better recovery

Stroke can be a debilitating and life-changing experience, not just for the person who has endured the stroke, but also for families and carers. 

Functional recovery of the upper limb after stroke or other nervous system injury continues to be one of the greatest challenges faced by rehabilitation professionals. 

Although many patients regain walking ability, a substantial proportion fail to regain functional use of their arms and hands. 

Patients consider their loss of arm function as serious, or more serious, than their impaired walking, and have expressed dissatisfaction and frustration with the inadequate training possibilities after discharge from hospital. 

Mary Galea from the University of Melbourne’s Department of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) has dedicated much of her professional life to working with and understanding the challenges faced by people recovering from stroke.

Professor Galea believes there is a clear link between reduced upper limb function after stroke and poor health-related quality of life. 

“In practice, rehabilitation of the arm is often given a lower priority than training of walking, and little time is devoted to upper limb rehabilitation,” Professor Galea says.

“Efforts need to be made towards increasing the uptake of effective interventions to improve health outcomes for patients.”

A ‘Hand Hub’, the first of its kind in Australia, based at the Royal Park Rehabilitation Centre was established to harness the use of technology as a means of exercising the affected arm and hand to maximise recovery of function. 

The Hand Hub has different workstations where patients practise activities using computer games specifically designed to encourage arm and hand movements.

Enter members of Denny Oetomo’s Robotics team at the Melbourne School of Engineering. 

Dr Oetomo, a Robotics Engineer in Mechanical Engineering is keen to explore the use of robotics to improve upper limb function and help build on the promising work of the Hand Hub. 

He has introduced the Armeo robot into the Hand Hub, which is now being used successfully by patients with little or no voluntary arm movement. 

Like the other devices in the Hand Hub, the Armeo uses games to motivate patients and encourage repetition of active movements.

“As part of our research we will examine data captured by the Armeo to study the recovery progress, and to refine the robot’s algorithms for more effective treatments,” Dr Oetomo says.

“We are excited to be involved in this cross-disciplinary collaboration as we witness research move from laboratory to clinical practice. Our motivation is simple: seeing patients progress in their rehabilitation.” 

www.mech.unimelb.edu.au