Focus Area

Creating the Enabling Environment for Healthcare Transformation, Bringing Care Home

Problem

Brain stroke remains one of the leading causes of death and disability in Europe, and projections show that with a ‘business as usual’ approach, the burden of stroke will significantly increase in upcoming decades. The most of patients with stroke survives the initial event but go on to live with various disabilities for many years. These people require specific and customized rehabilitation, which enable them to improve their post-stroke health status. Existing therapeutic equipment’s didn’t provide sufficient data analytics outcomes, moreover are almost not capable to solve psychical issues (depression) of patients. Therefore, application of the new solutions, which will improve existing rehabilitation process, will be important. The main reasons to use new technological devices will be; increase intensity, specificity, and feedback during rehabilitation.

The projections indicate that between 2015 and 2035, overall there will be a 34% increase in number of stroke events in the EU from 613,148 (estimated costs €45 billion in 2015) to 819,771 (estimated costs €60 billion in 2035)[1]. Opportunity cost of family members and friends providing care were estimated at €15.9 billion in EU with productivity losses due to death and morbidity at €9.4 billion[2]. The number of people living with the long-term effects of stroke will rise in the coming decades (from 3.7M in 2015 to 4.6M in 2035). Health insurance companies cover the hospitalization of the patient in the rehabilitation department. Depending on the type of hospital, treatment costs are € 500-1000. However, the sum does not reflect the actual cost of hospitalization. On average, the length of hospitalization is about 7 days (10-14 in our hospital, younger patients - 18 - 30 years - even longer).

Who hold the issue

The issue owns hospitals, which are responsible for acute and post-acute care after stroke events and patients, which needs to undergo long therapies in specialised centers.

Hospitals and specialised rehabilitation centers :

• Missing evidence data collection towards establishment of stroke register to assess quality of care along the whole stroke pathway
• Not available efficient personalized therapeutic equipment’s available to take care home
• Extensive and negative economic burden connected with post-acute care

Patients:

• Difficulties with access and transport to rehabilitation centers
• Existing therapeutic equipment’s doesn’t combine physical and psychical treatment
• Negative economic burden of long-term rehabilitation, where post-acute care affects families or care givers

Therefore, it is important to set effective healthcare planning and techniques towards improving of health status.

Gaps and benefits

The provision of rehabilitation and therapies in EU is not widely monitored or benchmarked, especially in terms of therapies that patients may receive after discharge from hospital. The basis of patients rehabilitation is physical therapy, which is focused on reeducation of mobility of affected limbs, stabilization and coordination training. There is missing adoption of the solutions, which improves cognition and motion of patients in the same time. According to the recommendations from existing studies: All stroke survivors should get an early assessment for rehabilitation in hospital, and receive therapy at an appropriate level both in hospital and following discharge at home, which is with existing therapeutic equipment’s available in EU not possible.

Solution

ART4Life is new rehabilitation equipment after post-stroke evets, which for the first time connects art, technology and medicine towards effective solutions, which enable patients to improve their health status. ART4life is focusing on specific movements for which there’d been no other rehabilitation possibilities so far. For each movement that the patients receive online interaction with a visual (mainly related to art, which gives older people deeper sense) or responsive acoustic interface. Solutions is based from sensors that not only show the patient’s progress on the devices but also track their overall improvement. Visual user interface is playful, reflecting the movement.

Project aims to enhance solution in order to take rehabilitation care home and interact online with specialist.

Experiences

The key competitive advantage of the ART4life are: scalability of one solution with therapeutic equipment’s for additional movements, connection with art, which is after our research widely accepted by users over 70 years, communication platform ready for telemedicine and solution offering taking care and rehabilitation home.

Futher steps

There is much more opportunities and open solutions to make rehabilitation and verification of cure progress. Actually we are working on force feedback devices, connection and mesurement of muscle electricity and we are on good way to complement every measure with NIA ( neural imput actuator ) to see the progress of hemispherical cooperation.

Why its uniqe ?

Art is the expression of emotions, thoughts and desires usually depicted through visual forms such as sculpture or painting. Our therapeutic solution connect art with IT technologies and medicine towards improving of physical health, cognition and well-being.

Key advantages:

- Complexity of the trainings where patient trains during one exercise arm and leg and play art based serious games

- Art-based solution improve rapidly motivation of patients to rehabilitate

- Improved efficiency of the rehabilitation –almost 15% more effective rehabilitation with ART4LIFE

- Intelligent sensors – data based patient’s rehabilitation and progress mapping

- Scalability – possibility to enhance existing hardware with additional therapeutic equipment’s

- Ready for telemedicine – communication platform and secure database for exchange of health records, familly meber support

- Afrodable price