Our mantra is to embrace “Your Best Self” – the version of you that you want to be. For many users of SportsArt equipment, this often means they aspire to become healthier or improve their physical fitness. Patients who use the ICARE, however, simply want to walk again. This is how SportsArt and the Madonna Institute help people do just that.
The ICARE (Intelligently Controlled Assistive Rehabilitation Elliptical) system is a piece of physical rehabilitation equipment that provides patients with the ability to regain or retain the flexibility and strength required for walking. Its motor-assisted leg movements closely mimic natural kinematic and electromyographic (EMG) patterns, meaning their training helps them follow a very natural gait.
In addition to this, the ICARE’s motor ensures that every patient’s needs are accommodated as they proceed through the training and can be adjusted as progress is made.
“When I first started (the ICARE), I could only use it for five minutes and I’d have to stop and rest,” One patient expressed, “And now I’ve built up the stamina to where I can do a mile in under 14 minutes!”
Clinicians are grateful for the ICARE, too. With its body unweighting system, patients are moved into an upper-body harness that can be adjusted electronically and have their feet strapped into the footbeds. This takes the physical burden both off of the patient and the nurses, who often would have to pick up and move the patients’ legs for them in order to get the same results.
Everyone who has experienced working with the ICARE agrees its effects are absolutely life-changing: “If not for the ICARE, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing right now,” says Shauna Hicks, a stroke survivor who originally was told she could never walk again. “I’m getting back to being me.”
