WikiTherapist

It is becoming more and more natural that the technology and robotics industries are taking an increasing interest in health care. The growing strain on health care systems is triggering numerous projects to develop assistance robots, robot arms and rehabilitation systems. While a lot of these projects look very promising for the future, they still need the help of a lot of experts in the field of healthcare to design the desired programs to be run by the machines.

The Dutch Robotics Wikitherapist project will develop software platforms so that therapists can develop and run their own programs, tailor-made for their own patients. Ideally this will trigger an online community of therapists, where they share their best programs for certain diseases or disabilities and can improve other ones with the help of their peers.

The idea of innovative technology will also prove to be valuable with regard to treating autistic children. Where many of these children undergo various problems with regard to communication, robotics can teach these children more motor control functions from an early age on.

While programs with exercises already show promising results, it is often too difficult for therapists to develop their own treatments, and large companies are not interested in developing the necessary software because the potential market is too small. Wikitherapist is looking to develop two different kinds of interactive technologies, for a robot and for an interactive gameboard, which should be as easy to use as a spreadsheet. Here, the designated therapist simply indicates what he/she is hoping to achieve and the software does the rest.