The Eurecat technology centre is a partner in a Catalan consortium led by the Guttmann Institute which has brought new technologies such as artificial intelligence, interactive digital video and neuromodulation into rehabilitation treatments and cognitive stimulation for patients with brain damage. The project comes under the RIS3CAT Nexthealth Community sponsored by ACCIÓ, the agency for business competitiveness in the Ministry of Business and Knowledge, and is coordinated by Biocat.
The initiative is part of the Innobrain project which also involves the businesses and technology or research centres Starlab, SKY & EARTH, the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, the Computer Vision Centre, the Parc Taulí de Sabadell Healthcare Corporation, the Girona Healthcare Institute (IAS), the UAB Foundation for Health and Ageing and the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute. The project’s €1.16 million budget is co-funded by the ERDF Operational Programme for Catalonia 2014-2020.
Over the course of the three-year project, research has been conducted on bringing in technologies to enhance the rehabilitation of patients with brain damage, dementia or psychiatric disorders and to identify more personalised treatments. Innobrain is based on the premise that “if the brain is stimulated properly, it can alter its activity and functioning to recover from damage it has sustained; 60% of patients who undergo cognitive training improve their recovery”, says Dr Josep M. Tormos, the Director of Research at the Guttmann Institute. “The challenge is to help the remaining 40% so that this rate can be increased, which means we need to work out the right strategy to bring new technologies into these treatments”.
