WillowWood was awarded nearly $5 million over five 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. RERCs are considered national centers of excellence for a particular area of rehabilitation. WillowWood has become the first manufacturer to secure this award and will partner with long-time collaborator the Ohio State University to collectively work on innovative design and research for enhancing assistive devices, what will be referred to as the IDEA Center.
The goal of the IDEA Center is 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 an education and dissemination program as a core activity.
The award brings the total grant funding portfolio of WillowWood Global to $13M secured in the last two years.
“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,” said Matt Wernke, PhD, director, research and development, WillowWood, and coprincipal investigator for the IDEA Center.
“Our team has been building to this point for many years, and we are thankful to continue our research trajectories as well as explore novel ideas. I know our faculty and students are eager to engage in the IDEA Center,” said Heather Powell, PhD, professor at the Ohio State University and coprincipal investigator for the IDEA Center.
“WillowWood remains focused on enabling the best clinical outcomes for patients, and this partnership with Ohio State University combined with the support from NIDILRR will help us continue to deliver a positive impact. The partnership with the Ohio State University has been incredibly successful over the last ten years, resulting in several products commercialized and award-winning presentations at domestic and international conferences. Through our past collaboration and projects included in the IDEA Center, we expect to greatly transform the interface between patient and device,” said WillowWood COO Daniel Rubin.
