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Health-tech innovation could soon prolong healthy human life well beyond 100 years. And that’s awesome!!!
At the same time, it brings many new challenges related to the elderly, such as the increase of stroke, which is the second leading cause of death and a major cause of disability worldwide. The number of people having a stroke in their 40s and 50s has risen dramatically.
There is an 8% probability of stroke from 60 to 69 years old.
More than 12 million people worldwide suffered a stroke in 2019 and it is increasing...
About 70% of people affected by stroke are unable to get back to professional activities and 30% of the patients remain with limited motor function in the upper and lower limbs requiring treatment and the help of caregivers, which affects drastically their quality of life.
Interestingly, despite the health technology advances, we still use traditional rehabilitation methods and tools. Currently available equipment for rehabilitation on the market have severe physical limitations, in addition to the lack of adaptability to the most diverse requests, severely limiting the treatment applied by health professionals. One of the main causes of this is the market's lack of intelligent, safe, effective and affordable equipment for rehabilitation.
Recent studies showed that rehabilitation is efficient for motor recovery, but combining them with Brain-machine interfaces (BMI), that makes a direct connection of the brain to external devices, providing even higher and significant motor improvement [1] for upper limbs. The same technology applied to lower limbs showed also interesting outcomes [2], motivating the search for inexpensive solutions to help these the motor improvement of these patients in upper [3] and lower limbs [4].
Related Scientific Publications
[1] Brain-machine interface in chronic stroke rehabilitation: a controlled study
Ander Ramos-Murguialday, Doris Broetz, Massimiliano Rea, Leonhard Läer, Ozge Yilmaz, Fabricio L Brasil, Giulia Liberati, Marco R Curado, Eliana Garcia-Cossio, Alexandros Vyziotis, Woosang Cho, Manuel Agostini, Ernesto Soares, Surjo Soekadar, Andrea Caria, Leonardo G Cohen, Niels Birbaumer
[2] Long-Term Training with a Brain-Machine Interface-Based Gait Protocol Induces Partial Neurological Recovery in Paraplegic Patients
Ana R C Donati, Solaiman Shokur, Edgard Morya, Debora S F Campos, Renan C Moioli, Claudia M Gitti, Patricia B Augusto, Sandra Tripodi, Cristhiane G Pires, Gislaine A Pereira, Fabricio L Brasil, Simone Gallo, Anthony A Lin, Angelo K Takigami, Maria A Aratanha, Sanjay Joshi, Hannes Bleuler, Gordon Cheng, Alan Rudolph & Miguel A L Nicolelis
[3] Development of a Low-Cost EEG-Controlled Hand Exoskeleton 3D Printed on Textiles
Rommel S Araujo, Camille R Silva, Severino P N Netto, Edgard Morya and Fabricio L Brasil
[4] G-Exos: A wearable gait exoskeleton for walk assistance
Mouhamed Zorkot, Léa Ho Dac, Edgard Morya, and Fabricio L Brasil