UCC researchers to join European project aiming to reduce rehab waiting lists

UNIVERSITY College Cork researchers will be joining a European project, Scale-Up4Rehab, which aims to reduce healthcare waiting lists for in-person rehabilitation by digitalising rehab services.

Scale-Up4Rehab is funded by an Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) grant involving 13 European partners across clinical and research and development sectors, and aims to develop an open NWE virtual rehabilitation clinic similar in design to platforms such as Netflix, through which existing virtual rehabilitation therapies will be piloted and scaled up.

Ireland will be one of five regional pilots in Europe alongside the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg, who will establish the feasibility of the virtual rehabilitation clinic across a range of conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease and cerebral palsy.

Dr Joseph McVeigh, Head of Discipline of Physiotherapy and Mr David Murphy, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, lead UCC’s involvement in the €10.8 million five-year project, of which almost €1 million has been allocated to UCC.

The UCC team, working with the other Irish partner University College Dublin, will focus on people with chronic pain and long covid.

Dr McVeigh expects the project to improve access to effective rehabilitation services for patients.

He said that “waiting lists across a range of rehabilitation services are far too long” and that “digital solutions offer the potential to deliver rehabilitation earlier, faster, and direct to their home.”