Research theme and focus

• Biomechanics and Rehabilitation

Summary and overview

There are over 10.8 million disabled people living in the UK today. Nearly 6.5 million have mobility impairments. These numbers are growing as the median population age increases and age-related mobility issues due to musculoskeletal and neurological conditions such as arthritis and stroke, become more prevalent.

Rehabilitation helps people improve and maintain their abilities in everyday life, but currently patient outcomes are hampered in two ways:

• Firstly, there is a lack of easy to use dynamic tools to help therapists to accurately analyse their patients' gait and mobility performance and devise the most effective personalised training and rehabilitation programmes.
• Secondly, as more and more rehabilitation occurs at home and requires patients to practice in the absence of a therapist, better ways to support in-home mobility and training are needed, to enable patients to achieve their potential in everyday mobility tasks.

The FREEHAB Healthcare Impact Partnership is developing soft wearable rehabilitative devices to directly address these needs. FREEHAB builds on discoveries from our previous EPSRC Right Trousers project in which we discovered new soft materials that can be used like artificial muscles. These include 3D printable electroactive gel materials and soft, but strong, pneumatic chains that change they shape when inflated and can exert considerable forces. These materials will be used to develop devices to help people to walk, stand and to move from sitting to standing.

Together with integrated sensing technology we are making devices that physiotherapists can use to accurately pinpoint limitations in their patients' movements, thus enabling them to plan personalised training programmes. We are also making simpler devices that the patient can use to enhance their mobility activities and exercises with confidence when a therapist is not with them.

To develop FREEHAB wearable assist devices, we are working in partnership with physiotherapists in NHS services and in private practice, with people who have personally experienced physiotherapy for their mobility problems, and with business partners who are experienced in bringing rehabilitation and assistive technology devices through from concept to market. We have determined what patient and clinical considerations we need to take into account to design and develop the devices and continually consult with partners for their ideas and opinions as the devices are developed.

We are planning how FREEHAB technologies will progress from research and development through translation into clinical trials, and to bring the devices into the supply chain after the project is over. This is undertaken with advice from our clinical and business partners and with regard to regulation of devices for use in the NHS and intellectual property for commercialisation.

When we have designed and manufactured our prototype devices we test them to determine how physiotherapists find them useful for assessment and how patients find them comfortable and useful for carrying out their physiotherapy training and rehabilitation. We collect their views alongside formal measurements of patients' performance when they are wearing the devices compared to their performance when using a conventional orthotic brace.

This is conducted under the right regulatory and ethical frameworks for early proof of concept testing. The results of our evaluations will help us to prepare for the next stages in product development and clinical testing needed to bring the devices into use in the NHS.