Document Type

Theses, Masters

Master Thesis

Master thesis

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

2.3 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Publication Details

Successfully submitted for the award of Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) to the Technological University Dublin, 2013.

Abstract

For post-stroke rehabilitation of the upper limbs, increased amounts of therapy are directly related to improved rehabilitation outcomes. As such, a low cost therapy platform is proposed suitable for facilitating active therapy and administering activeassist therapy to the shoulder/elbow region of the upper limbs of individuals post-stroke in a local clinic or domestic setting. Enabling a person to undergo intensive rehabilitation therapy outside of a rehabilitation hospital setting permits the amount of therapy administered to be maximised. While studies have shown that technological approaches to post-stroke rehabilitation do not produce better outcomes than equal amounts of traditional therapy in a rehabilitation hospital setting, a technological approach has the potential to have significant benefits when that therapy is being undertaken in a local clinic or domestic setting, where the individual undergoing therapy is relatively unsupervised. These benefits largely relate to a technological approach being more motivational for the person than an equivalent manual approach. However, for such an approach to be economically viable, effective, low cost devices are required. This document presents and critically discusses the design of this proposed low cost therapy platform along with possible routes for its further development.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/D7JG9D

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Document Type

Master thesis