Stroke is one of the leading causes of adult disability: two thirds of patients survive, but approximately 80% of stroke survivors lose some ability to use their arm and/or hand, which affects eating, manipulating objects such the oven knob, writing, etc.

Our goal is to induce long lasting improvement in such activities of daily living by having patients perform systematic exercises adapted to their disability by performing motivating therapeutic video games. We have examined the main needs of chronic stroke patients, and developed simple rehabilitation tools to help them to gradually improve their hand function.

Clinical trials on chronic stroke patients showed a significant improvement of the motor function in both hand and arm (though only hand movements were trained), which maintained after the stroke. This project was initiated with the groups of Teo Chee Leong of NUS and Ted Milner of McGill.

In recent years we have focused on simple systems for home therapy. We have created a natural interface for implementing task-oriented-therapy (ToT) consisting of a force sensitive touch-screen table with instrumented objects SITAR (J of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering 2017), which as recently been commercialised  as tyromotion.com/en/products/myro. A part of the current activity moves to therapies for children with cerebral palsy (J of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 2019)

In collaboration with Paul Bentley, we have designed the gripAble handgrip, which is the first rehabilitation device that can be used from the bedside to home. GripAble has been trialled by over 500 stroke survivors at Charing Cross Hospital and community centres (PLoS ONE 2016; Royal Society Open Science 2017; Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 2017; UK PCT patent No. 2537580) has span-out to the gripable.org company of our postdocs Mike Mace and Paul Rinne. I have also  advised the neurofenix.com company developing affordable technology for home-based rehabilitation.

Related publications

• L Dovat, O Lambercy, Y Ruffieux, D Chapuis, R Gassert, H Bleuler, CL Teo, E Burdet. A haptic knob for rehabilitation of stroke patients. In Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int Conf on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 977-82, 2006 (Best application paper award).
• O Lambercy, L Dovat, R Gassert, E Burdet, CL Teo, T Milner. A haptic knob for rehabilitation of hand function. IEEE Transaction on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 15(3): 356-66, 2007.
• L Dovat, O Lambercy, R Gassert, T Maeder, T Milner, CL Teo, E Burdet. HandCARE: a Cable-Actuated REhabilitation system to train hand function after stroke. IEEE Transaction on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 16(6): 582-91, 2008.
• L Dovat, O Lambercy, B Salman, V Johnson, TE Milner, R Gassert, E Burdet and TC Leo. A technique to train finger coordination and independence after stroke. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology 5: 279-87.
• O Lambercy, L Dovat, H Yun, SK Wee, C Kuah, K Chua, R Gassert, TE Milner, CL Teo and E Burdet (2011), Robot-assisted rehabilitation of grasp and pronation/supination. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 8: 63, doi:10.1186/1743-0003-8-63.
• O Lambercy, L Dovat, B Salman, R Gassert, TE Milner, E Burdet and CL Teo (2011), Robot-assisted Rehabilitation of Hand Function After Stroke with the HapticKnob and the HandCARE. Biomechatronics in Medicine and Health Care. L Li and KY Tong eds, Pan Stanford Publishing PteLtd. 43-56.
• S Balasubramaniam, J Klein and E Burdet (2010), Robot-assisted rehabilitation of hand function. Current Opinion in Neurology (invited), doi: 10.1097/WCO.0b013e32833e99a4.
• O Lambercy, L Dovat, H Yun, SK Wee, C Kuah, K Chua, R Gassert,TE Milner, CL Teo and E Burdet (2011),Robot-assisted rehabilitation of grasp and pronation/supination. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 8:63, doi:10.1186/1743-0003-8-63.
• S Balasubramanian, A Melendez-Calderon and E Burdet (2012), A robust and sensitive metric for quantifying movement smoothness. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 59(8): 2126-36.
• S Balasubramaniam, R Colombo, V Sanguinetti and E Burdet (2012), Robotic assessment of upper-limb motor function after stroke: a review. American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 91(11): 255-69 (invited).
• S Balasubramanian, A Melendez-Calderon, A Roby-Brami and E Burdet (2016), On the analysis of movement smoothness. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 12:112.
• D Reinkensmeyer, E Burdet, M Casadio, G Kwakkel, JW Krakauer, C Lang, N Ward, N Schweighofer (2016), Computational neurorehabilitation: Modeling plasticity and learning to predict recovery. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 13:42.
• A Hussain, S Balasubramaniam, N Roach, J Klein, N Jarrasse, M Mace, A David, S Guy and E Burdet (2017), SITAR & sensor-based assessment of the (pathological) motor function. Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering 4: 2055668317729637.
• P Rinne, M Mace, T Nakornchai, K Zimmerman, S Fayer, P Sharma, J-L Liardon, E Burdet and P Bentley (2016), Democratizing neurorehabilitation: How accessible are low-cost mobile-gaming technologies for self-rehabilitation of arm disability in stroke? PloS ONE 11(10): e0163413.
• M Mace, P Rinne, J-L Liardon, C Uhomoibhi, P Bentley and E Burdet (2017), Elasticity improves handgrip performance and preference during visuomotor training. Royal Society Open Science 4.2: 160961.
• M Mace, N Kinany, P Rinne, A Rayner, P Bentley and E Burdet (2017), Balancing the playing field: Collaborative gaming for training. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 14: 116.P
• Rinne, M Mace, T Nakornchai, K Zimmerman, S Fayer, P Sharma, J-L Liardon, E Burdet and P Bentley (2016), Democratizing neurorehabilitation: How accessible are low-cost mobile-gaming technologies for self-rehabilitation of arm disability in stroke? PLoS ONE 11(10): e0163413.
• A Hussain, S Balasubramaniam, N Roach, J Klein, N Jarrasse, M Mace, A David, S Guy and E Burdet (2017), SITAR & sensor-based assessment of the (pathological) motor function. Journal of Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies Engineering 4 (2017): 2055668317729637
• SA Mutalib, MAV Mace, E Burdet (2019), Bimanual coordination during a physically coupled task in unilateral spastic cerebral palsy children. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 16 (1): 1.