Dear Friends and Colleagues,

In the name of the International Consortium on Rehabilitation Technology (ICRT) and the local organizers, it is our great pleasure to invite you to RehabWeek 2022, from July 25^th to 29^th in the beautiful city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Rotterdam’s story, the bombardment and reconstruction led to a particularly strong drive to innovate among the locals, making it the perfect place for the RehabWeek community to meet! Along with our partners Rotterdam Ahoy, Rotterdam Tourism and Kenes Group, TUDelft & ErasmusMC  as the hosting institutions would like to extend our very warm welcome to the rehabilitation technology world.

RehabWeek is a well-established and highly reputable biennial conference. In 2019, six societies and more than 1,400 delegates from all over the world joined us in Toronto for the 4th RehabWeek. This time, we are proud to announce that 8 reputable societies have already agreed to be part of RehabWeek 2022. These societies are:

• International Consortium on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR) 
• International Functional Electrical Stimulation Society (IFESS)
• International Industry Society in Advanced Rehabilitation Technology (IISART)
• International Society for Virtual Rehabilitation (ISVR)
• Netherlands Society of Rehabilitation Medicine (NSRM)
• Dutch Chapter of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO-NL)
• Masterclass in Neurotechnology (MiNT)
• American Society of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM)
  
  

In addition to this, several societies that were involved in RehabWeek in the past, have expressed their interest to remain connected with us by organizing certain sub-events or sessions of the conference. We are thrilled about this interest and warmly welcome those societies and their members. RESC (The Competence Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering and Science (RESC) at ETH Zurich) joins the RehabWeek 2022 as a partner presenting a panel discussion on financial models for innovative assistive technology 

As we are, while we write this letter to you, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of rehabilitation technology is changing as rapidly as never before. Many rehabilitation providers are faced with incredible challenges in order to provide their patients with adequate therapy during this crisis. Technology is being used all over the world to connect health care providers with their patients, and to support clnicians to provide adequate rehabilitation therapy despite all obstacles. Researchers and manufacturers are working on finding new solutions with high speed and health authorities are speeding up processes to allow fast reactions.

By RehabWeek 2022, we hopefully will be back to a more normal state. Ideally, we will have had time to analyze these eventful months and to come up with learnings, not only for a future pandemic, but also for our every day “normal” clinical life. What innovations can help us be more effective and efficient in delivering rehabilitation? Which processes allowed us to come together and battle the Novel Corona virus together?

We are very much looking forward to (physically) welcoming you to Rotterdam! We can’t wait to exchange our knowledge and thoughts on rehabilitation technology face to face, and to enjoy some social un-distancing and a couple of beers! Let’s make it happen in Rotterdam!

Kind regards

For the RehabWeek Steering Committee