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Professor Denise Taylor
Physiotherapist, Health & Rehabilitation Research Institute, AUT University, Auckland, NZ
Denise is a physiotherapist with a PhD in neuroscience. She works in the Health & Rehabilitation Research Institute at AUT University. She is passionate about improving the lives of people with disabilities and believes that we are likely to have greater success in achieving this if we bring together the world of the ‘patient’ with those of the engineers, clinicians, designers and health funders. Putting the patient at the heart of the development of rehabilitation technology requires understanding of both the patient experience and the process of rehabilitation.


Developing Technologies for Rehabilitation: Who is it we are doing this for?

The current exciting advances in medical technologies need to be flavoured to suit the users, both patients and therapists, and be appropriate to work in the environments the users operate within. Health systems are complex and assistive devices that fit comfortably in the workflow of the health system have a greater likelihood of successful uptake by clinicians, and therefore patients. The focus of our team’s involvement in the Medtech CoRE is to promote the voice of the patients and clinicians in the development of assistive technologies. Understanding the user and the typical environments in which the user interacts will have a positive influence on the design, usability and ultimately translation of technology into clinical practice for the benefit of the patients.