“With 320 presenters from 36 countries, the ISPO World Congress program will provide a comprehensive display of the latest research and insights for prosthetics, orthotics, and assistive technology service providers with all presentations being recorded for participants to go back to at any time until October 2022,” said Edward Lemaire, World Congress chair and president of ISPO. “It is a true pleasure to be celebrating ISPO’s 50th anniversary by providing global access to state-of-the-art knowledge with our virtual event. Coming together in an online event also emphasizes the significance of the Congress motto, Digital Transformation in an Evolving World, as digital applications become regular parts of our daily lives and provide many benefits for the healthcare industry.”
Experts and Researchers
Highlights of the event include three keynote lectures by Alarcos Cieza, PhD, Matthew Major, PhD, and Alex Dickinson, PhD. Cieza supervises work at the World Health Organization (WHO) in the fields of vision, hearing, disability, and rehabilitation in her role as unit head of Sensory Functions, Disability and Rehabilitation. Major will discuss a selection of novel experimental techniques being implemented to populate digital maps defining the relationships between select parameters in his keynote “Personalized Rehabilitation: Mapping the Links Between Prosthesis Parameters, Motor Capacity, and Clinical Outcomes for Optimizing Interventions.” Further, he will discuss how an iterative optimization approach can deliver personalized lower-limb loss rehabilitation interventions when integrating targeted physical therapies that encourage self-organization with the prosthesis.In his talk “Digital Workflows for Predictive Prosthetic Socket Design,” Dickinson will describe how he and his team have tried to reframe prosthetic socket design in the paradigm of formal engineering design, whilst aiming to make simulation-based design tools usable and accessible to clinicians. The IC2A Inspirational Lecture will be delivered by Christopher Hutchison, cofounder and CTO of ProsFit. His lecture, “Prosthetics for All – Changing Lives through Digital Technologies,” discusses how providing assistive technology to everyone is a challenge; however, the technologies, solutions, approaches, and funding are available to tackle this, allowing everyone to increase their individual impact, both professionally and personally.
Regional Panels Provide a Global Perspective
A series of daily  panels will feature regional experts who will explore how digital transformation is affecting practice in different parts of the world, providing a global perspective on digital applications for assistive technology. Details on the regional panels are available online in the preliminary congress program at ispo-congress.com/programme/overview.
The program will cater to different time zones to accommodate the international audience. However, as participants may not be able to attend all presentations live, the recordings of all scientific sessions and exhibitor workshops as well as the scientific posters will remain available in the virtual platform through October 2022. The virtual exhibition area and international community area will be accessible during the live event as well as around the clock on demand until November 30.
The program is accredited for one ISPO CPD credit per hour by the ISPO Continuous Professional Development Committee.
ISPO is a multidisciplinary organization that operates worldwide and aims to improve the quality of life for persons who may benefit from the rehabilitation practice of prosthetic, orthotic, mobility, and assistive technology. ISPO is represented by more than 3,300 individual members in over 100 countries.
To register for the 18th International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) World Congress, visit ispo-congress.com/registration.
