Associate Professor Amit Sethi leads the Neuromotor Recovery and Rehabilitation Laboratory. Sethi’s expertise in biomechanics, motor control and neurorehabilitation is what drives his research program in developing novel mechanistically informed interventions and technologies to improve upper extremity function in individuals post-stroke. The interdisciplinary team, which includes Buddy Clark, mechanical engineer, and Murat Akcakaya and Sarah Ostadabbas, electrical and computer science engineers, is currently developing a smart, affordable and multimodal telerehabilitation technology to deliver individualized therapy to improve arm and hand function and therefore quality of life after stroke. The artificial intelligence-based system will use a smartphone camera and inertial measurement units, which are sensors commonly found in smart watches, to accurately detect and automatically guide patients to perform correct (or non-aberrant) functional movement patterns.
Sethi’s team has received internal and extramural funding for the development of this technology, including support from the Pitt Innovation Challenge (PInCh). His team recently filed a non-provisional patent for this technology as well. We truly believe this system will revolutionize the delivery of telerehabilitation services for millions of stroke survivors, especially for those living in rural and suburban areas.