The main goal of this BoF session is to bring together a diverse group of data professionals and disciplinary researchers to discuss opportunities and challenges of the application of the FAIR principles to prosthetics design and assessment. The FAIR principles emphasize Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability of research outputs for humans and machines, and have been applied in multiple fields since their introduction in 2016 to increase science reproducibility and impact. Their uptake is usually dependent on the adoption of standards and practices within a given field and is greatly favored by the creation of disciplinary networks (or communities) sharing needs and solutions.  

In the context of prosthetics’ development, an important step is represented by the integration of user needs during the design, which generally lacks a multi-disciplinary approach regulated by specific reference guidelines. The adoption of standard and shared procedures in user needs’ collection for rehabilitation engineering, combined with standard benchmarking frameworks, would bring to more reliable assessment of prosthetics’ solutions by enabling effective data sharing within the field. We regard this use-case as a testbed for the integration of the FAIR principles in designing Health Technology applications. 

During this BoF, we plan to host researchers framing the problem of standardization in user-centered design of prosthetic devices and highlighting the benefits and challenges of adopting recommended practices in both user needs collection and prostheses’ assessment, including standards for representation and sharing of data following the FAIR principles. Then, we will guide the discussion among the participants to focus on the rationale of creating an Interest Group within RDA of early adopters of FAIR in prosthetics design and assessment, including possible objectives and ways ahead. We aim to connect with other networks and professional bodies in the “Health and Technology” sector to foster convergence and collaboration among domains.

The creation of this IG would be initially promoted and supported by the EU project Skills4EOSC (Skills for the European Open Science Commons), which aims to advance Open Science and Research Data Management in Europe, also by supporting and engaging communities of researchers in specific domains.

• Welcome (5 minutes) – Valentina Pasquale (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Curtis Sharma (4TU.ResearchData)
• Presentations’ topics (approx. 10 minutes each)  

  • “Use case in approaching patient needs” – Kristi Turner (Shirley Ryan AbilityLab)

  • “Methods for user needs collection and prosthetics assessment in user-centered design (UCD)” – Maria Fossati & Marianna Semprini (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia)  

  • “UCD in prosthetics technology development” – Adam Spiers (Imperial College London)
  • “The impact of personalized Health Technology for a sustainable Healthcare” – Erik Prinsen (Roessingh Research and Development)
• Q&A and discussion (40 minutes) 
• Next steps and wrap-up (5 minutes) 

Here is a list of previous or ongoing projects that may be relevant to the topic:

1. Skills4EOSC project (in progress) 

‘Skills for the European Open Science Commons: creating a training ecosystem for Open and FAIR science’ was funded by the European Commission Horizon Europe programme and will set up a pan-European network of competence centres to speed up the training of European researchers and harmonise the training of new professional figures for scientific data management. The aim is to develop common methodologies, activities and training resources to unify the current training landscape into a collaborative and reliable ecosystem and to provide dedicated community-specific support to leverage the potential of EOSC for open and data-intensive research. WP6 of the project fosters building and animation of professional networks for data stewards, researchers and thematic experts. Fostering professional networks will ensure that lifelong learning is embedded and sustained within the daily workflows of data stewards, researchers based at institutions and within thematic networks. Researchers involved in thematic networks will play a key role in defining discipline-specific FAIR data practices. Task 6.3 on Thematic networks aims at stimulating the uptake of FAIR data practices in different domains, including Health & Technology research.

2. EUROBENCH  

The EUROBENCH project aimed at creating the first benchmarking framework for robotic systems in Europe. The framework will allow companies and researchers to test the performance of robots at any stage of development. The project will primarily focus on bipedal machines, i.e. exoskeletons, prosthetics, and humanoids, but will be designed to be easily extended to other robotic domains. 

Maria R. Fossati, Giorgio Grioli, Manuel G. Catalano, and Antonio Bicchi. 2023. From Robotics to Prosthetics: What Design and Engineering Can Do Better Together. J. Hum.-Robot Interact. 12, 2, Article 27 (June 2023), 24 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3588323 

Herbst, Jonathan; Polanski-Schräder, Lucas MT; Vogt, Joachim; Schürmann, Tim; Beckerle, Philipp. Validation and revision of the questionnaire to explore human factors and their technical potential for lower limb prosthetics. Prosthetics and Orthotics International 45(1):p 6-11, February 2021. DOI: 10.1177/030936462093199  

Bianca Lento, Effie Segas, Vincent Leconte, Emilie Doat, Frederic Danion, Renaud Péteri, Jenny Benois-Pineau, Aymar de Rugy. 3D-ARM-Gaze: a public dataset of 3D Arm Reaching Movements with Gaze information in virtual reality. bioRxiv 2024.01.30.577386; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.30.577386 

Longatelli, V., Torricelli, D., Tornero, J. et al. A unified scheme for the benchmarking of upper limb functions in neurological disorders. J NeuroEngineering Rehabil 19, 102 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-022-01082-8