Dr. Hermano Igo Krebs

Capitalizing on the new understanding of brain plasticity, we introduced a paradigm shift in clinical practice in 1989 when we initiated the development of the MIT-Manus robot for neuro-rehabilitation and deployed it into the clinic. Since then we collected evidence to support the potential of enhancing and augmenting recovery following a stroke, first during the sub-acute and then the chronic phase.  Our efforts and that of others led to the endorsements starting in 2010 from the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association, and the Veterans Administration for the use of rehabilitation robots for the Upper Extremity, but not yet for the Lower Extremity. AHA recommendations were the same in the 2016 revision. Furthermore, it was demonstrated in the VA system that upper extremity robotic therapy has an economic advantage over manual therapy. More recently we completed a pragmatic study RATULS under the auspices of the National Health Service of the United Kingdom and its NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme, which enrolled 770 stroke patients. Thus, we have developed novel robotic treatment and evaluation tools and have managed to collect the experimental evidence that demonstrates the unequivocal therapeutic benefits stemming from robot-aided rehabilitation for the upper extremity as well as present shortcomings. This talk will present an overview of our past rehabilitation robotics efforts and more recent efforts addressing the identified shortcomings.