Keynotes

Monday, March 22, 2021 @ 4:00pm CET

Speaker: Paolo Bonato (Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School)

Title: Digital Health Technologies and Their Role in the Development of Precision Rehabilitation Interventions

Abstract: Over the past two decades, advances in digital health (e.g., wearable and mhealth technologies) have enabled the collection of massive amounts of data in the clinic and in the home and community settings. Miniature wearable sensors have been used to gather movement and physiological data. Ambient sensors and wearable cameras have provided contextual information. Smartphones and tablets have been utilized to collect ePRO’s. In parallel, advances in the field of machine learning have made it possible to derive clinically meaningful information from these large datasets. These developments are transforming the field of rehabilitation medicine. In this lecture, we will review recent advances in the application of digital health technologies to the field of rehabilitation. First, we will review the use of these technologies in the clinic. We will discuss how sensing technology is gradually replacing costly camera-based systems and how combining - by relying on machine learning algorithms - data collected using inexpensive cameras with data collected using sensing technology can lead to highly accurate kinematic data. We will then show how relying on digital health technologies and on machine learning algorithms, researchers have developed approaches suitable to derive accurate estimates of clinical scores via the analysis of sensor data collected during the performance of functional movements. We will then present evidence that these technologies are transforming the way rehabilitation interventions are designed and implemented as they enable tracking how each patient respond to the prescribed therapy, thus enabling “precision rehabilitation” interventions. Next, we will discuss applications of digital health technologies outside of the clinic. We will show how these technologies can facilitate the process of gathering information about participation (as defined by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health framework developed by the World Health Organization) and about the impact of contextual factors on clinical outcomes. Then, we will review challenges that researchers are facing in deriving reliable metrics from data collected in the home and community settings. We will present examples of approaches aimed to assure that such metrics are accurate and reliable. Furthermore, we will discuss the role of digital health technologies in enabling the implementation of interventions with minimum (in the clinic) or no (in the home) direct supervision by therapists while enabling patient monitoring for safety. Finally, we will discuss how we envision that the field of rehabilitation will evolve in the next decade as digital health technologies are integrated in clinical practice.

Monday, March 22, 2021 @ 6:00pm CET

Speaker: Oliver Amft (Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)

Title: From digital twins to wearables and back

Abstract: In this talk, I will give an overview on our efforts in designing and utilising wearable technology and artificial intelligence (AI) methods with and against digital twins to address medical applications. Due to its current relevance, I will start by reporting from the Corona Datenspende initiative and show how the by far largest study on exploiting wearable data helps to fight COVID-19. Subsequently, the talk will highlight how wearable system design can be optimised in co-simulations with digital human twins on examples from gait analysis and eyeglasses design. I will show how we add realism to human twin models to maximise system design insight. In the final part, I will show how we recently scaled individual to mass behaviour models to analyse interaction and SARS-CoV-2 virus spread under different interventions, including contact tracing, test-to-release, and quarantine.