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How ZeroG is Used with Marianjoy Patients

Source Video: Marianjoy

Vanessa Flaherty, PT, DPT, a physical therapist at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton, IL, shows how ZeroG helps them safely perform gait retraining with their patients.

 

ZeroG can help those who are recovering from neuromuscular disorders such as stroke, traumatic brain injury and incomplete spinal cord injury or other orthopedic conditions. ZeroG enables Marianjoy therapists to provide the patients with task-specific practice. This means, that the patient is able to practice the entire task of walking as a whole without breaking up the movement into individual components.

 

ZeroG differs from conventional harness systems. Traditional systems catch the patient immediately once the loss of balance is detected in order to prevent a fall. ZeroG, however, allows the therapist to set the amount of distance before the catch mechanism is employed. Not only does this help the patient to relearn how to control and recover from a stumble or fall, it also retrains the brain on the proper way to react and correct for a loss of balance. Because ZeroG provides the opportunity to make errors in a safe environment, the patient is better able to carry over these skills to real-world situations.

 

zerog-woodway

 

Another benefit of using ZeroG, is that it allows for increased repetition and practice of the task of walking. ZeroG is also integrated with a Woodway split-belt treadmill. The treadmill allows the therapist to vary the speed of the patients gait as well as isolate working on one leg or the other to help improve the affected leg’s swing time and challenge it’s stability.

Because the system can be set to support any amount of the client’s body-weight, most clients are able to walk for a longer time period and often at a faster pace without fatiguing as quickly.

 

Recent neuroplasticity studies have shown repetition and task-specific practice like this is essential for the recovery of functional mobility as well as the cortical recovery in the brain itself. The ZeroG system can also be used while performing balance training, floor transfers and while teaching patients how to overcome other barriers such as stairs, curves and other obstacles they may encounter at home and within their community.

 

zerog-floor

For more information on using ZeroG at Marianjoy, please call 800-462-2366 or visit: www.marianjoy.org

 

To see entire video, click here to view on YouTube: ZeroG Marianjoy Video

Aretech Partners with APDM Wearable Technologies

Source:  PRWeb

Aretech announced today that the ZeroG Gait and Balance Training System will now feature APDM’s Mobility Lab for comprehensive gait and balance assessment. APDM technology includes wearable sensors that provide sensitive, validated and reliable outcome measures of rehabilitation interventions. When combined with ZeroG, therapists now have the opportunity to treat their patients with the highest level of safety and treatment options, and then accurately quantify improvements in gait, balance and postural control.

ZeroG Gait and Balance Mobility Lab

“We’ve always known ZeroG is the most advanced rehabilitation system in the world; however the one piece we were missing was the ability to accurately assess improvements in walking, postural stability, turning, sit to stand and other ADL tasks with validated measures. By integrating ADPM’s Mobility Lab into the ZeroG framework, therapists can now track outcomes with a variety of clinical scales and store this information in ZeroG’s secure patient database,” said Joe Hidler, CEO of Aretech. “We are looking forward to this new partnership with APDM and continuing to advance rehabilitation options for so many patients, therapists and researchers who use our technology.”

ZeroG Mobility Lab

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Through comprehensive validation against motion analysis and clinical measures, Mobility Lab is the most trusted wearable sensor technology on the market for quantifying gait and balance,” said Matthew Johnson, General Manager of APDM. “Pairing our technology with Aretech’s ZeroG is a perfect match to help make it easy for therapists to collect, analyze and store valid outcome measures to justify treatment.”

Advantages of ZeroG

  •     Safely treat a wide range of patient sizes and clinical diagnoses across a wide range of therapeutic activities
  •     Therapy intensity can be modulated through high-level dynamic body-weight support
  •     Real-time biofeedback and games motivates patients
  •     Lowers the risk of injury to patients and therapists
  •     Easy to use, with short setup times

Advantages of Mobility Lab

  •     Justify treatment with evidence-based practice
  •     Analyze outcome measures with functional tests such as timed up and go, 2 minute walk and sit to stand
  •     Accurately measure minimally-detectable changes in gait and balance
  •     Record natural movement, activity levels, gait, balance, turning, tremor and intervention response

About Aretech, LLC
Aretech, LLC, based in Ashburn, Virginia, is the world leader in robotic overground body-weight support systems. The company has a strong commitment to quality, innovation, and developing technology based on evidence-based research. Additional information about Aretech can be found at http://www.aretechllc.com.

About APDM, Inc.
APDM Inc., based in Portland, OR, produces the highest quality wearable sensors on the market; used by hundreds of universities, hospitals, and professional sports teams worldwide. APDM’s mission is to develop and commercialize best-in-class solutions for quantifying human movement with wearable technologies. Additional information about APDM can be found athttp://www.apdm.com.