We are delighted to name Malisha van der Berg our editor of the month for August, recognising a summer of curiosity-led editing across stroke rehabilitation technology. Having introduced herself to the community in June, she has spent August deep in the evidence on robotics, haptics and virtual reality, and the pages she has shaped are all the richer for it.
You may remember Malisha from June, when she received Editor of the Month as one of our newest volunteer editors. When she joined our editing team she brought a researcher’s habit of following a question wherever it leads, and August has been a case in point. What began as a look at technology in stroke rehabilitation quickly became a wider exploration, taking in robotics, haptics and virtual reality and the ways they work together to help people recover.
Her first stop was robotics, where she worked through the distinction between end-effector and exoskeleton devices, two approaches that are easy to confuse and important to tell apart. That led naturally to haptics, the science of touch and force feedback, and then into virtual reality (VR) in rehabilitation. Reading across all three, a theme emerged. Used together, these technologies can lift a person’s motivation and improve their outcomes, keeping them engaged in the work of recovery rather than counting down the minutes.
I’ve learned a great deal from reviewing other editors’ page edits, and I feel incredibly grateful to be part of such a talented and international team of editors here at Physiopedia.
That insight found its way straight into practice. Inspired by fully immersive VR, Malisha has been applying it in shoulder rehabilitation, noticing that her clients build range of motion while so absorbed in the virtual world that the effort barely registers. It is a good example of how the evidence our editors gather can loop back into their own clinical work, and their patients’ progress.
You can explore the topics Malisha has been working on across Physiopedia, from virtual reality in rehabilitation to robotics in rehabilitation and haptics in stroke rehabilitation. If her month is anything to go by, following your curiosity is no bad way to edit. Thank you Malisha, from all of us.
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