Deans' stroke musings: SMART Arm investment helps stroke survivors recover faster

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

SMART Arm investment helps stroke survivors recover faster

Yeah for Australians. You'll have to go to the link to see a non-understandable picture of what it looks like. Have your therapist report back to you on its feasibility.
http://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/18497
SMART Arm Pty Ltd, the latest start-up enterprise from leading Australian university commercialisation company UniQuest, has secured investment from Townsville Mackay Medicare Local (TMML) to launch an innovative device for improving recovery outcomes for people who have experienced stroke and/or brain injury.

The Sensory-Motor Active Rehabilitation Training (SMART) Arm is a portable, non-robotic technology that enables stroke survivors with upper limb weakness to drive their own rehabilitation.

With feedback on performance via an interactive computer program and incremental increases in load and reaching range, the SMART Arm reduces the degrees of freedom to be controlled and provides a goal for movement. For stroke survivors with very severe weakness, it can also be used with outcome-triggered electrical stimulation to augment full-range reaching.

UniQuest Managing Director, David Henderson, said SMART Arm Pty Ltd was formed to further develop, manufacture and market the technology, which originated from multi-disciplinary research at two Queensland universities.

“SMART Arm the company is the culmination of more than eight years of stroke rehabilitation research, design and testing at James Cook University (JCU) and The University of Queensland (UQ),” Mr Henderson explained.

“The SMART Arm technology was developed by researchers across a number of disciplines, including physiotherapy, neuroscience and engineering. We now have TMML on board, bringing to the venture its commercial and community health acumen and access to rehabilitation clinic and networks worldwide.

“This partnership demonstrates how collaborations between universities, research disciplines, and industry can translate into real and practical benefits for the wider community,” Mr Henderson said.

While details of the agreement between SMART Arm Pty Ltd shareholders and TMML remain commercial-in-confidence, the transaction is expected to accelerate the device’s manufacture so units could be available for distribution within 12 months.

Led by Dr Ruth Barker, an Adjunct Senior Lecturer from JCU’s School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine and Rehabilitation Sciences, the team which developed the SMART Arm included UQ researchers Professor Richard Carson (Human Movement Studies), Associate Professor Sandy Brauer (Physiotherapy), Dr David Lloyd (Human Movement Studies) and Kate Hayward (Physiotherapy PhD student).

The research team has demonstrated that a program of SMART Arm training improved arm function, arm muscle activation and neural plasticity in people with chronic stroke, with the last finding published in the July 2012 issue of Experimental Brain Research.

“We are thrilled to have a Queensland company like TMML back our innovation,” said Dr Barker.

“Stroke is the leading cause of severe long term disability in the Western world. Every year, over three million stroke survivors try to regain use of their upper limbs. SMART Arm is one of the few interventions shown to result in positive changes in neural plasticity in people with chronic stroke, so we’re very keen to see the device become available to as many as possible, as soon as possible,” Dr Barker said.

TMML chairman, Dr Kevin Arlett, said TMML recognised the potential for SMART Arm to address a major unmet need in the allied health care industry.

“We’re proud to be partnering with Dr Barker and her team to launch this technology commercially,” Dr Arlett said.

“The SMART Arm will make a huge difference to stroke survivor outcomes because it’s interactive and it allows patients to practise independently and direct their own rehabilitation. And, because it’s small enough to be used for clinical inpatient and outpatient settings as well as in rehabilitation services, nursing homes and local area health services, more people will benefit.”

Dr Barker recently demonstrated the SMART Arm device at a workshop on driving neural plasticity that was associated with this year’s International Society for Electrophysiology and Kinesiology Congress (ISEK2012).