Motivational complementing stroke rehabilitation

Important results from the project

The around 60 interviews shows a rehabilitation chain where the frequency of rehab activity drops for each link. Few of those interviewed received an overarching rehab plan. Six factors were identified as being important for self-managed rehab to work and motivation is the most important. A complete design prototype has been developed of a motivation driven web application, which generates and updates a virtual rehab plan using 5-10 types of integrated rehabilitation equipment.

Expected long term effects

The goal to develop the consortium further and to map current research and venture activities in the area was achieved by the open seminar ´Summit around the future stroke rehabilitation´ which gathered around fifty of Sweden´s most prominent researchers and equipment companies in stroke rehab at Sophiahemmet on the 18th of October. Two international trips have been made, the first to UK Stroke Forum and the second to Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. The consortium has grown during the initiation project from 1 to 5 universitites, from 1 to 4 clinical partners, from 1 to 7 companies.

Approach and implementation

The project started with a search for information and initial explorative interviews before the semi-structured interviews to follow. In the 1-2 hr problem interviews one was asked to speak about the experience of stroke and self-managed rehabilitation. Armed with the results from those interviews there was a ideation workshop at KTH for possible solutions. Those solutions were then described in text and illustrated to be sent out to more people followed by a string of ´solution´ interviews. Finally a design prototype was developed.