César Cuesta García, vice-dean of the Occupational Therapy degree at La Salle and specialist in child and adult neurorehabilitation, shares his interest in establishing a joint research line with the NESA team after learning about the technology through a student.
From the perspective of occupational therapy, he identifies three priority research areas with NESA. The first is sleep, whose relevance is transversal to all his patients. The second is heart rate variability as a marker of energy expenditure — his patients exhaust themselves performing basic activities of daily living such as tying shoelaces, and he sees here a very relevant research field. The third, and the one he is most passionate about, is the functionality of the upper limb in patients with neuromotor problems: somatosensory discrimination, hand problems and pain, where he identifies an important knowledge gap that NESA could help cover.
He emphasizes that his patients need more doses of therapy than they receive, and that NESA — both in passive and dynamic mode — can multiply that therapeutic dose significantly. He has ongoing conversations to develop a pilot study and, if the results allow, a clinical trial.
