Call for Standardization Committee Members for Clinical Stabilometry
Dear ISPGR Colleagues,
At the last ISPGR meeting in Bologna we had preliminary discussions regarding the standardization of stabilometry for clinical use, with much interest from those who attended this lunchtime session. From this meeting, we have decided to form the Standardization Committee for Clinical Stabilometry and are looking for ISPGR members who might be interested in joining this initiative.
At our meeting in Bologna, we decided to utilize web-based applications to enable members across the world to participate in the committee without the need to travel. We will initially focus on using both a Wikipedia format to organize documents necessary to create the standards, while also using web-based discussion boards for members to contribute, edit, and provide feedback to the creation of these documents. Our hope is that we can have a consensus meeting at the 2012 ISPGR meeting in Norway, with a paper to then be published detailing the developed standards. We plan for the standards to include everything from specifications of manufactured force plates to testing paradigms to calculations of reported postural sway parameters.
As we develop these standards we will be seeking input from the members of the committee. In particular it is our hope that the web-based discussion board will allow posting of relevant references by topic so that standards can be, where appropriate, supported by research.
The current effort of the committee will be to focus on developing standards that will be useful for furthering the use of clinical static posturography. Similar standards specific to research may be adapted in the future.
If you are interested in joining the committee, please e-mail Kimberly Edginton Bigelow at Kimberly.Bigelow@udayton.edu by July 15, 2011. You will then be kept informed of all developments.
For those of you who have already expressed interest, we thank you and will be in touch soon. The cancellation of the ISPGR meeting in Japan slowed our efforts.
Sincerely,
Fabio Scoppa, PhD (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) and
Kimberly Edginton Bigelow, PhD (University of Dayton, USA)
Committee Co-Chairs
Lorenzo Chiari, PhD (University of Bologna, Italy)
ISPGR Board Member Representative for Committee
Bastiaan Bloem, MD, PhD (Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Netherlands)
ISPGR President