WHY H-CAD

In the field of rehabilitation, the availability of a reliable and simple method for the rehabilitation of the arm function would have an immediate social impact and benefit. At a conservative estimate there are more than 30 million people in Europe having a physical disability. These numbers are bound to increase in the coming years with the impact of a demographic change. The economic costs of disability make it absolutely essential that the maximum number of these people remain independent. Therefore, there is a major need for methods of increase independence and ability to perform the tasks of everyday life with an acceptable social cost. The H-CAD Project aims at reducing the social rehabilitation costs by providing instrumentation that can monitor the patient’s progress during the rehabilitation performed at home. The main benefits provided by the present research can be summarised as follows:

• Provision of consistent information available to professional and final users of the methodologies currently used in Europe to perform a rehabilitative treatment.
  
• Specific information related to a comparison of users experiences, advantages and disadvantages.
  
• Information on care and treatment performed in the various hospitals.
  
• Harmonisation of procedures pursued by the provision of standard rehabilitative treatments and by a development of a device that should, in the medium term, be considered a common sensor based activity desk to be indifferently used by most of the professionals.
  

The Project, carried out with the help of clinical centres established in different European Countries, will guarantee the harmonisation of the rehabilitation treatment given at home combining different skills and perspectives in the field of neurological rehabilitation.