Staying connected: personalising stroke recovery and rehabilitation
One in four people experience a stroke. On return home the person with stroke is challenged to sense, move, think and engage in valued activities with an altered brain and body. The current approach to ongoing recovery is limited, and we do not yet have effective means of identifying people who may benefit from therapy nor how to select the most optimal therapy for an individual.
Through the Staying connected: personalising stroke recovery and rehabilitation (Tailor & Connect) project we will:
- monitor for markers of recovery using personalised sensors and artificial intelligence
- deliver bursts of therapy at point of need, at home
- provide feedback through new technologies and a central hub…to stay connected and to recover at home.
The project will monitor individuals with stroke (3–18 month following their stroke) for a period of one year. During this period, they will each receive 2 ‘bursts’ of evidence-based upper limb therapy that is tailored to their individual goals and activities that they nominate. Therapy will be delivered remotely via telehealth to the participants with stroke in their preferred environment. Individuals who have experienced stroke between 3 and 18 months previously may be eligible to participate in this project.
Aims
- Monitor time – and experience-linked bio psychosocial factors to derive personalised recovery algorithms for people with stroke living in the community.
- Deliver bursts of tailored learning-based rehabilitation in the home, to improve performance and satisfaction in client-selected, real-world activities.
- Create a centralised hub with interactive database that can provide health professionals with personalised predictive models of recovery to guide treatment planning, and stroke survivors with therapeutic feedback on task performance remotely at home.
- Make remote, technology-enhanced, precision rehabilitation a reality for stroke.
Hypotheses
- Individuals with stroke living in the community will demonstrate significant improvement in performance of self-selected, real-world activities following bursts of personalised rehabilitation coupled with technology-enhanced remote feedback.
- A model of rehabilitation that combines personalised bio psychosocial measures with the person’s experience of doing a task will strongly predict magnitude of improvement in self-selected real-world activities after stroke.
Research team
Members
Students
Mr Prasad Hettiarachchige
Research group
Collaborators
- Professor Damminda Alahakoon
- Professor Susan Hillier
- Associate Professor Michael Pollack
- Professor Mark Bayley
- Professor Lara Boyd
- Professor Elizabeth Skidmore
- Mr Rashmika Nawaratne
- Dr Shanthi Ramanathan
- Professor Michael Nilsson
- Professor Helene Polatajko
- Professor Chetwyn Chan
- Professor Leonid Churilov
- Mr Isuru Ranapanada
Take part in this project
Student applications
Students who are applying to study at The Florey can register their interest in this project. Refer to our step-by-step guide to help you with your application.
Apply to be a participant
This project is open for expressions of interest from those wanting to take part in a clinical trial. Contact us to learn more about participating.
Contact us
If you’re interested in learning more about this project please contact our team.
