Can you imagine a world where recovery does not happen in a hospital, but right in your own home?
Every day, countless individuals need rehabilitation after illness or injury. Yet, healthcare systems face rising challenges with an aging population requiring increased care while staff shortages create barriers to access. The WHO’s Rehabilitation 2030 initiative emphasises the urgent need to strengthen health systems worldwide.
This is where Scale-Up4Rehab comes in: launched in 2023, the project is transforming rehabilitation across North-West Europe by building an open virtual rehabilitation clinic. This platform enables patients to access state-of-the-art digital therapies from home while receiving guidance from healthcare professionals.
The project is implementing eight regional pilots across the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, and Luxembourg, testing virtual rehabilitation solutions while training healthcare professionals to integrate them into daily practice. By driving the digital transformation of healthcare services, the project aims to enhance patients’ quality of life and ensure long-term well-being.
And the stakes are high! In 2019 alone, the WHO European Region[1] reported that 394 million – two in every five individuals - needed rehabilitation services.
Remco Hoogendijk, Lead Partner of the project, shares the current progress:
The project is right on track. Since its start we spend quite some time re-imagining rehabilitation healthcare and translating that into a blueprint for a virtual clinic. After the selection and negotiation phase we have now a prototype ready, and we will welcome the minimal viable product in May. In one of our pre-pilots, we confronted elderly patients from Belgium with the idea and they loved it but also gave us valuable feedback. With the regional pilots coming up next, we will shape the virtual clinic based on actual needs from all over the NWE area and will help patients and professionals in working with this new rehab reality.
Led by Sint Maartenskliniek in the Netherlands, Scale-Up4Rehab builds on the success of the VR4Rehab project (2017-2020), which pioneered VR-solutions for rehabilitation. Leveraging on this established network, Scale-Up4Rehab is set to create a future where quality rehabilitation care is affordable and accessible to everyone, from anywhere.
Scale-Up4Rehab key figures
- 13 partners
- 6 countries: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany & Luxembourg
- Cooperating from 2023 to 2028
- Budget: €10.8 M
Learn more about Scale-Up4Rehab
[1] The need for rehabilitation services in the WHO European Region: https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/9789289058506