Rehabilitation engineering
Rehabilitation engineering
Rehabilitation engineering is the branch of biomedical engineering that deals with the systematic application of engineering methodologies to meet the needs of people with disabilities. Rehabilitation engineering makes use of technology to make disabled people as independent as possible by providing assisting devices that compensate for the disability. Areas addressed by rehabilitation engineering are mobility, communication, hearing and vision in activities associated with employment, education and day to day life.
Rehabilitation engineering has its origins in the need to provide assistance to individuals who were injured during the Second World War. Some of the aspects of rehabilitation engineering include assistive devices and aids, sensory augmentation and substitution systems, functional electrical stimulation, orthotics and prosthetics, myoelectric devices and techniques, transducers, signal processing, hardware, software, robotics, technology assessment, postural stability, wheel chair seating systems, gait analysis, biomechanics, biomaterials, control systems, ergonomics, human performance and functional assessment.
Developments in science and technology have led to enormous strides in the field of rehabilitation engineering. We have become successful in restoring vision, hearing, speaking and movement to some extent. Hearing aids and artificial limbs have been developed that restore the function of the impaired organs to some extent. It is possible for disabled people to lead almost ordinary lives.
However, the present day functional restoration still lags very much behind the capabilities of individuals without disability. A lot is yet to be achieved. Active research in going on at the world’s leading research institutes in this direction. Fields like nanotechnology and neural networks will play an important role in rehabilitation engineering in the future.
