WillowWood Global to open a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center

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WillowWood announced $5M in funding over 5 years from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) to establish a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) for Prosthetics and Orthotics. WillowWood has become the first manufacturer to secure this, and will partner with Ohio State University to collectively work on Innovative Design and Research for Enhancing Assistive Devices or what will be referred to as the IDEA Center.

The goal of the IDEA center will be to advance clinical care, specifically for the interface between human and device, through digitization, sensorization, and adaptation to positively impact patient health outcomes and overall performance. The advancements anticipated through the research will be realized and sustained through a robust education and dissemination program as a core activity of the IDEA Center.

"The challenges for pairing a patient with their prosthesis or orthosis require multidisciplinary teams and multifaceted approaches to overcome. The RERC mechanism enables our team to partner with cross functional experts to comprehensively transform the interface. We are grateful for this opportunity from NIDILRR," Matt Wernke PhD, Director, Research and Development for WillowWood and Co-Principal Investigator for the IDEA Center.