Brooks Rehabilitation is always at the forefront when it comes to incorporating solutions that can better help our patients, including a number of leading-edge technologies that are poised to revolutionize rehabilitative medicine. This is why we offer Aretech’s ZeroG Gait and Weight Balance System as an option for innovative and effective balance and gait-training therapies.

ZeroG is by far the most advanced robotic body-weight support network available, offering greater versatility, enhanced features, and improved overall efficiency. The WaveLink Wi-Fi Guardian is incorporated into the system, making it the first and only wireless technology of its class that does not rely solely on Wi-Fi connections. ActiveAssist, a novel dynamic fall recovery functionality, provides a more pleasant patient experience by smartly adapting body-weight support to its users.

Gait Training with ZeroG

Which ailments can ZeroG help to treat?

ZeroG is a no-resistance, dynamic, and adjustable device designed for use by a vast scope of patients with different requirements and abilities, rather than just a sole therapeutic device. ZeroG can assist patients weighing up to 400 pounds during standing exercises, and provide up to 200 pounds of support when moving along a 125-foot overhead track. The system works in both inpatient and outpatient environments, where it can help patients through specialized tasks involved during gait training, or a variety of other treatments to address balance and overall mobility issues.

Advanced fall-protection capabilities incorporated into the ZeroG enable therapists to assist with safe mobility, while protecting patients from potentially dangerous falls during their therapy. The system also employs gaming elements to provide patients with real-time biofeedback as to their task performance, while also putting their postural control and dynamic characteristics to the test to hasten and optimize recovery.

The system aids therapists in the treatment of patients with a variety of conditions, such as spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, stroke, cerebral palsy, as well as various other neurologic and orthopedic ailments. This infrastructure can assist with a wide range of functional activities, such as walking, climbing stairs, as well as balance exercises.

Gait and Balance Training

Gait pattern refers to how people walk and balance their posture. Our ability to maintain an erect posture is determined by this gait rhythm. An upright gait and balance are vital to older persons conducting everyday tasks, such as walking or reaching, without risk of pain or injury. In fact, gait and balance training are critical to preventing dangerous falls.

Balance, on the other hand, controls the sense and power of the body to respond rapidly to a circumstance, including an unsteady surface, as well as to carefully correct itself. The visual system (sight and head), the vestibular network (eardrum), and the somatosensory network (the skin, muscles, joints, and nerves) all play crucial roles with regard to achieving and maintaining functional balance. ZeroG’s gait and balance training challenges and improves each of these subsystems through a variety of exercises.

Features of ZeroG

Since the dawn of modern medicine, assistive medical technologies have been created for the purpose of solving single problems. ZeroG blends generations of medical breakthroughs with cutting-edge technology to create new diagnostic and therapeutic processes that safely and efficiently address a wide range of health issues. The system incorporates a number of innovations to offer patients engagement, trackable improvement and optimal outcomes.

Dynamic Body-Weight Support and Advanced Fall Protection

Immediately after injury, physical therapists encourage patients through a variety of rehabilitation techniques using the ZeroG to provide dynamic support and stability during walking, sitting-to-stand, balancing, and other therapeutic and recovery activities. Most patients have a fear of falling when transitioning from the hospital to their home. The ZeroG system allows patients to train to prevent injuries related to falling down, while also promoting confidence by providing a secure, controlled environment during their recovery.

Irrespective of vertical motion, ZeroG ensures a constant, and consistent, amount of body-weight support. If unloading is configured to 20 percent of a patient’s body weight, for instance, the patient will still feel 20 percent lighter while moving from a seated to a standing posture.

User Interface and Robotic Trolley

ZeroG uses a simple touchpad or wireless control to guarantee a user-friendly experience, and its interface was developed with therapist input to keep the patient’s needs in mind. Additionally, ZeroG’s automated robotic trolley cart monitors patient motions up to 5 mph instantly in real time, eliminating any sense of pulling or drag from behind — the vertical unloading is the only sensation of weight the patients experience.

Patient Safety and Setup

During a therapy session patients are placed into a harness which is then secured to the ZeroG overhead robot in less than five minutes, and because their past session records and other critical data are conveniently accessible, treatment can begin right away. These features cuts down on setup time considerably, allowing patients as much therapy time as possible.

Easy physical setup does not equate to compromising patient safety, however. ZeroG includes powerful fall-prevention features capable of tracking patient movements 1,000 times per second. Since 2008, therapists have employed ZeroG to assist hundreds of thousands of service users, while causing no harm to the patients or themselves.

TriP

ZeroG’s Training Responses in Postural Rehabilitation, or TRiP, protocol uses controlled stimuli of different intensities to help patients understand how to recover from an instance of loss of balance, whether in a static state or in movement. TRiP teaches the body and mind to recognize the onset of such incidents, and to right themselves to prevent future falls.

ZeroG Kinetics

It can be difficult for someone suffering from an injury to take note of exactly what their body is doing while actively engaged in therapeutic exercise. ZeroG’s cutting-edge technology collects and provides that data in the moment to improve a patient’s reactions and recovery.

Target-matching components from ZeroG Kinetics give patients real-time neurofeedback of their motions, challenging their postural control and dynamic stability.

Interactive Gaming

The ZeroG program includes several engaging activities that test the patient’s cognitive abilities while making the treatment process much more enjoyable. The patient progresses in their recovery, almost without knowing it, while “playing” and simultaneously providing detailed data during every session. Therapists can use this data to adjust and improve treatment strategies for optimal outcomes.

Session Reporting

A wealth of valuable training information from every session is captured, processed and encrypted in a secure database. This information can easily be reviewed by a therapist to assess and assist in the patient’s recovery, and can also be conveniently distributed through a variety of formats.

Qualifications to Operate ZeroG

Balance and gait disorders are a group of functional issues affecting an individual’s positional sense, capacity to move, and ability to stay upright. Patients who suffer from such issues require attention, compassion and the safest environment in which to progress therapeutically.

At Brooks Rehabilitation, ZeroG is operated by qualified, experienced physical therapists committed to providing the best possible experiences and outcomes for their patients.

Experience the Extraordinary ZeroG Gait and Balance System at Brooks Rehabilitation

Brooks Rehabilitation specializes in the treatment of balance issues caused by aging, accident, injury, or sickness. Our facilities are staffed by therapists with considerable balance rehabilitation training, along with the latest technologies for complete examinations and balance strengthening. Our licensed professionals conduct a thorough examination to determine the underlying deficiencies that cause balance problems and to develop tailored treatment strategies.

Contact Brooks Rehabilitation today to learn more about our ZeroG therapies and other services.

We have many locations in Northeast Florida where we provide balance and vestibular treatments. We will help you or your relative return to normal functioning as fast as possible, using the most innovative procedures backed with evidence-based approaches. For additional information, please contact us immediately.