lRehabilitation medicine is an integral part of “prevention, clinical medicine, rehabilitation and healthcare”. Closely connected with clinical treatment, it is inevitable for patients to shorten their course of treatment and improve their quality of ife.
In 2012, the Ministry of Health published the Guiding Opinions on Rehabilitation Medicine in the “12th Five-year Period”, in order that rehabilitation medicine would be elevated to a national issue. Since them, China has attached more and more importance to people’s needs for rehabilitation medicine. During 10 years thereafter, it has successively released policies, including the Notice on Including Certain Medical Rehabilitation Projects in Basic Medical Insurances, Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Publishing the National Action Plan for Disability Prevention (2016-2020), Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Regulations, Basic Standards for Rehabilitation Medicine Centers (Trial) and Notice of the General Office of the National Health Commission on Speeding up Trial Rehabilitation in Surgeries. On one hand, the coverage of rehabilitation services has been increasing with the constant release of national rehabilitation policies; on the other hand, with the awakening of nationals’ health consciousness, rehabilitation has gradually become an important part of national health services.
At present, approximately two million people suffer from cerebral stroke per year, and 78% to 80% patients with cerebral stroke cannot independently live because of disability. Besides, 60% patients who have become handicapped owing to diseases are still subject to upper limb dysfunctions, especially hand dysfunctions, after entering the clinical phase. Task-oriented high intensity repeat training is the main method for functional rehabilitation of upper limbs and hands.
Through technology accumulation and extension, SRT developed businesses in the field of medical rehabilitation, creatively applied soft robot technologies in hand rehabilitation in 2020 and developed the first hand rehabilitation training device with active function for resistance training. In the same year, it completed the tests of Class II medical devices for registration and the tests of sports rehabilitation devices in National Institutes for Food and Drug Control and National Quality Supervision & Inspection Center for Rehabilitation Aids. With its products successfully included in the Catalogue of Chinese Rehabilitation Aids by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, it won the Award for Outstanding Industrial Design granted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
In terms of application, the training devices get involved in the whole rehabilitation cycle. Through active and passive combined training of patients’ ill limbs, they stimulate patients’ nerves and muscles to assist the ill limbs in recovering their functions, and improve patients’ quality of life, well recognized by clinical experts and patients.
Solutions – Product Demonstrations
Products: active and passive hand rehabilitation training device
Brief product descriptions:
Active and passive hand rehabilitation training device has been the first soft silicone hand rehabilitation training device that SRT has independently developed in combination with theories of rehabilitation medicine, sciences on soft materials and pneumatic control technologies. Dependent upon superior ductility and skin-friendliness of soft materials, the training devices can dominate the active and passive rehabilitation training of patients in the whole recovery process.
Product: Mirror-based Hand Rehabilitation Training Device
Brief product descriptions:
The mirror-based hand rehabilitation training device uses visual feedback therapy. Through synchronous training of healthy and ill parts of hands, it stimulates mirror neurons of brains to directly improve hand symptoms such as spasm and weakness. It indirectly trains cranial reflex nerves and veins. It improves conservative therapies of brain or nerve injuries and shortens post-operation rehabilitation cycle for the ultimate purpose of increasing patients’ confidence in rehabilitation, recovering functions of ill limbs and improving quality of life.
Functional features:
1. Simulate muscle-actuated methods to avoid secondary damages
The actuation module is only inosculated with joints during human anatomy, and its freedom of motion is the same as that of hand joints. By simulating the mechanism of kinesiology, the training device can maintain continuous passive motion and mirror motion for stretch exercises of the fingers. In addition, the actuation module can adjust its own shape according to patients’ motion status, to protect patients from secondary injuries such as strain.
2. Passive training relieves muscle tension
The passive training mode is fully automatic. When patients lose active control, they will be first recommended to receive passive training, because it is helpful for recovering flexor and extensor strength, widening range of joint motion, and promoting active finger stretching.
3. Mirror training improves control ability
Mirror training is useful for mapping the motion mode of healthy hand parts onto the ill hand parts. By constantly visually stimulating activity of patients’ cerebral cortex, it can promote reorganization of brain functions and stimulate recovery of ill hands’ motion functions.
4. Ergonomic design makes it easy and comfortable to protect joints
In line with human engineering, the training device is designed modularized and highly compatible according to structural features of human hands. The semi-open wrap design of the training gloves is helpful for protecting palm, finger and interphalangeal joint, making flexion and extension motions more comfortable and natural.
