English

Rehabilitation has an important role in improving the health and well-being of the population and the overall efficiency and sustainability of the health systems. The ageing of the population will increase the number of persons who need rehabilitation, while there is a shortage of healthcare staff. Currently, access to rehabilitation is uneven both between and within countries. Technology offers the possibility to provide efficient care and access to dedicated rehabilitation care regardless of the location of a patient. Different forms of rehabilitation therapy using virtual technologies are already taking place. However, these digital applications merely are used in a local setting and economies of scale are not exploited. Transnational cooperation is needed to reach these economies of scale, bringing the digital transformation of the rehabilitation sector to a next level. In order to ensure equal access to rehabilitation care and foster the resilience of health systems, this project will make an important step forwards in the digitalization of the rehabilitation sector, being the first in building an open NWE virtual rehabilitation 'clinic', through which existing virtual rehabilitation therapies will be scaled up. 8 regional pilots (NL/DE/IR/LU), which act as showcases, will be implemented in which rehabilitation professionals in various healthcare settings integrate virtual rehabilitation in their daily practice. Additional, capacity building activities will be carried out. 

The main outputs: 

• A running open virtual rehabilitation clinic including a minimum of 12 virtual rehabilitation interventions 
• 8 finalized pilots in which rehabilitation practitioners have used the virtual rehabilitation clinic to integrate several virtual rehabilitation interventions in their daily practice and have reached a minimum of 280 patients in their rehabilitation at home
• A package of capacity building activities for patients, healthcare practitioners and enterprises.