IDMR faculty member Prof. Jan Reinhardt attended the 18th World Congress of the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM) in Sydney, Australia from June 1st to June 6th. In which Prof. Reinhardt chaired a workshop on prospective budgeting for rehabilitation services based on patient functional health assessment at admission.

The workshop is important for cost control and service optimization in general, but also for needs assessment and fund allocation in disaster situations. Presenters were Francesca Gimiglian, Chair of ISPRM from Second University of Naples, Italy; Andy Haig, Emeritus Professor at The University of Michigan, U.S.; Jian’an Li, professor, professor at Nanjing Medical University, China and etc..

The conference also included the annual session of the disaster rehabilitation committee of which Prof. Reinhardt is the past chair. Attendants discussed rehabilitation needs and interventions for current major international disasters.

Prof. Reinhardt also presented a machine learning model for estimation of the needed investment to improve functioning of populations with rehabilitation given available baseline parameters. This model is currently being developed under the lead of Prof. Reinhardt’s team at IDMR, Sichuan University and in collaboration with Nanjing Medical University. Prof. Reinhardt conducted interviews with rehabilitation medicine leaders from countries/areas including China, Italy, Portugal, U.S., New Zealand and Morocco to assess their current payment systems as well as recruiting them into a project expanding the Chinese research project to the international level. In addition to these countries, Prof. Reinhardt’s team also recruited the following countries/areas for the international project Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, England, Egypt, Germany, Jordan, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and etc..