Feasibility and Cost of Robot-assisted Upper Limb Rehabilitation With Different Levels of Supervision

Upper limb impairments are often a result of neurological or traumatic injuries (e.g., stroke, traumatic brain injuries). These impairments may decrease independence in performing activities of daily living, severely affecting patients' quality of life. Growing evidence shows that increasing upper limb therapy dose for patients could improve functional outcomes and prevent their long-term deterioration. However, due to limited resources (e.g., the number of therapists) and high rehabilitation-related costs, providing a higher therapy dose to patients is challenging, both in the clinic and after discharge, and finding new models of care is therefore critical. Minimally supervised or unsupervised robot-assisted therapy (i.e., patients training with rehabilitation devices with minimal to no supervision of an external person) holds the promise of allowing an increase in therapy dose with li