Matt To’omua recalls his first interactions with concussion as a ‘head knock’ during a game in high school, which resulted in him attending the local hospital emergency department.

While this has highlighted the issue and the need to be vigilant, the stories don’t often provide the full scope of different aspects of concussion recognition, management and long-term consequences.

These questions often fall to primary healthcare practitioners, including physiotherapists.

Patient engagement is a key factor in the successful delivery of healthcare. 

However, it can be difficult to achieve that engagement when patients come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds—patients don’t always engage the way we may expect or with what we want. 

Smart watches and other wearable activity trackers (WATs) encourage wearers to walk for up to 40 minutes more a day according to a recent review by University of South Australia researchers in The Lancet Digital Health.

A multidisciplinary research group based at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Perth is looking at the use of robotic technology to take on some of the rehabilitation load in patients with neurological conditions, allowing patients to do longer sessions of therapy by keeping them actively engaged and providing assistance and support as required.