International Society for Virtual Rehabilitation (ISVR) newsletter - 2nd Issue
Here I leave for your enjoyment the new issue of the ISVR newsletter we are editing, this time featuring the Sensory-Motor Systems lab of ETH Zurich, the Nisa Neurorehabilitation Hospital Units in Spain and an article about the International Industry Society in Advanced Rehabilitation Technology (IISART).
"Welcome to the Second Edition of the ISVR Newsletter! We are keeping the ISVR community up to date on exciting research and technological developments around the world. Members of the ISVR community are moving the field of virtual rehabilitation ever forward through innovation, team work, and a commitment to improving patient care, treatment, and quality of life. This issue provides further examples of the success that can result from teams dedicated to the development and application of virtual rehabilitation technologies by members of the ISVR community. We hope that by sharing this information we can bring awareness to the research and the implementation of virtual rehabilitation technologies worldwide with a further goal of improving collaborative efforts.
In this issue, the Technology Profile article highlights the ARMin robot, the first arm exoskeleton for rehabilitation. The Sensory-Motor Systems lab headed by Robert Reiner of ETH Zurich assisted in the research and development of the ARMin robot over the last 10 years, seeing it all the way through to commercialization. The Clinical Profile features the Nisa Neurorehabilitation Hospital Units in Spain who have integrated VR-based therapy, including exoskeleton robots, as part of their everyday clinical practice. One of the most exciting aspects of ISVR is that it is a community in which experts from different disciplines share ideas, dreams and interests in the pursuit of advancing the field of virtual rehabilitation for the benefit of a wide variety of patient populations. We currently rely on our conference series (ICDVRAT and ICVR) and associated partnerships to facilitate this information exchange. However, the new ISVR website hosts a discussion forum that we hope will provide a means of outreach that is quicker and more organized than even our popular Facebook site. We invite Society members to volunteer to lead special interest groups/discussion groups in topics of interest to the society. If you are interested in supporting our society in this way, please contact me: president@isvr.org.
Our affiliated partnerships are extremely important to us and ISVR is an associate member of IISART (see article on page 6) who are leading the way in establishing searchable databases for people interested in virtual rehabilitation. Take a look at the IISART Techindex to find out more about technologies that are currently available and the IISART Educationindex for a variety of courses aimed at clinicians, scientists and engineering audiences. Both databases may be valuable to ISVR members and, of course, offer the opportunity for you to publicize your own courses. Send your details to education@iisartonline.org.
We look forward to hearing more about the work of our members and hope to highlight you in coming issues of the ISVR Newsletter, so please join us in this community building effort and send in your ideas for news items and profile articles to the Newsletter editors: newsletter@isvr.org.
Sue Cobb, President"
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