RehabWeek

Attendees, exhibitors & solutions

Who this event is for

Industry trends

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Glossary

1

Rehabilitation robotics

Powered devices and control systems that assist, train or assess movement in people with neurological or musculoskeletal impairment. At RehabWeek the term covers gait trainers, upper-limb therapy robots, mobile manipulators and the control-engineering research behind them.

2

Exoskeleton

A wearable structure worn over the body that applies torque or support to joints, used in clinics for overground gait training and in research for assistive or restorative walking. Vendors exhibit both rigid linked designs and soft, textile-based variants.

3

End-effector gait trainer

A treadmill- or overground-based therapy device that moves the patient's feet or pelvis through a mechanical end point rather than bracing each joint, common in stroke and spinal cord injury gait rehabilitation.

4

Functional electrical stimulation (FES)

Delivery of timed electrical pulses to paralysed muscles so they contract during a functional task such as stepping, cycling or grasping. FES loops are frequently paired with robotic or sensor-triggered therapy systems.

5

Brain-computer interface (BCI)

A system that decodes cortical or other neural signals, usually EEG, and converts them into control commands for a robot, stimulator or virtual avatar. BCI-driven rehabilitation is a recurring research track in the RehabWeek congress programme.

6

Neurorehabilitation

Therapy aimed at restoring function after stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury or progressive neurological disease, built on motor learning, intensity and task specificity. It supplies the clinical rationale for most technology shown at the exhibition.

7

Telerehabilitation

Remote delivery and supervision of therapy through video, sensor streams and home-based devices. Relevant to Lausanne attendees because it lets clinics extend therapy dose beyond the hospital stay.

8

Virtual reality rehabilitation

Task practice inside an immersive or screen-based virtual environment, often with motion tracking and game mechanics to drive repetition. A long-standing RehabWeek topic, with dedicated scientific sessions and commercial platforms.

9

Assistive technology (AT)

Products that compensate for lost function rather than restore it: powered wheelchairs, alternative and augmentative communication, seating and positioning, environmental control and daily-living aids.

10

Prosthetics and orthotics

Custom-made limb replacement and external bracing, increasingly shaped by 3D scanning, additive manufacturing and instrumented components that log walking data.

11

Inertial measurement unit (IMU) / wearable sensor

Body-worn accelerometer-gyroscope packages used to quantify gait, balance and upper-limb use inside and outside the clinic. Sensor-derived outcomes are a common thread between the research tracks and the commercial stands.

12

Outcome measures

Standardised scores used to judge therapy effect, such as the Fugl-Meyer Assessment for the upper limb, the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), the Berg Balance Scale or the 10-metre walk test. Expect exhibitors to quote them as validation evidence.

13

Human-robot interaction (HRI) and admittance control

The control strategies that decide how a therapy robot yields to or resists the patient's own movement, including impedance and admittance control, force sensing and intent detection.

14

Serious games

Game-designed therapy tasks with scoring and progression used to keep patients engaged during repetitive exercise, typically coupled to sensors or robots and often delivered remotely.

15

IISART

International Industry Society in Advanced Rehabilitation Technology, the industry body that has historically organised the commercial exhibition alongside the RehabWeek scientific conferences. Exhibitors often reference IISART when describing the industrial track of the week.