Shirley Ryan AbilityLab

Rehabilitation is a relatively new medical specialty, becoming certified as such in 1947.[6] Immediately following World War II, which had a significant impact on the specialty of rehabilitation, President Truman appointed five-star General Omar Bradley to head the Veterans Administration (VA). General Bradley recruited Dr. Paul Magnuson,[7] a U.S. Army orthopaedic surgeon, who created the infrastructure for the VA to provide rehabilitation for Veterans. Dr. Magnuson served the Truman administration until 1951 and, shortly thereafter, declared his vision to establish a medical rehabilitation hospital for American citizens.

Dr. Magnuson endeavored to start a first-ever hospital for citizens who suffered injuries to their bodies and brains. With very modest philanthropic means, Dr. Magnuson purchased a vacant printing building at 401 E. Ohio Street in Chicago, Ill., and a new organization was formally incorporated as the not-for-profit Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC). By the spring of 1953, the building was converted into a small rehabilitation hospital and began serving a limited number of outpatients.

In 1958, the building was renovated, enabling the hospital to serve inpatients. In 1967, RIC formed an academic affiliation with Northwestern University, establishing a residency program in physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), and soon thereafter appointed its first Chief Scientist. In 1974, RIC moved into a new location at 345 E. Superior Street in Chicago, Ill., and became the first free-standing rehabilitation hospital in the nation.

In December 2009, RIC announced that it had purchased the site of the former Chicago CBS building site (355 E. Erie Street) on which to build a new hospital, expanding its capabilities and capacity. Groundbreaking took place on July 1, 2013.[8]

In 2016, Pat and Shirley Ryan gave a transformative gift to the new research hospital, which would be called Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a change that would align with a new name and re-branding of the organization. Pathways.org, the organization founded by the Ryans 30 years prior, became part of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in 2017.[9]

On March 25, 2017, RIC officially became known as the "Shirley Ryan AbilityLab", as it opened its new research hospital.

One of the most significant challenges in healthcare is that scientific breakthroughs do not make their way to patients fast enough, if at all. The majority of science is conducted in laboratories that are physically separated from the clinical setting, often in different buildings. As a result, research in those healthcare or educational settings is not aligned with patients' needs. It takes an estimated average of 17 years for only 14% of new scientific discoveries to enter day-to-day clinical practice.[10]

In 2012, the organization began a living experiment by outfitting its existing facility with an ability lab, an applied-research and therapeutic space, on one floor. The prototype space allowed researchers to work shoulder-to-shoulder with patients, doctors and therapists. Central to applying research during care are working translational ability labs in which interdisciplinary teams develop new research and insights to help patients gain more function (ability) and achieve better outcomes:

• Think + Speak Lab
• Legs + Walking Lab
• Arms + Hands Lab
• Strength + Endurance Lab
• Pediatric Lab

The hospital is also home to a number of other research groups.

The Center for Bionic Medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is the largest bionic research group in the world. Discoveries and innovations include:

• The first thought-controlled bionic arm[11] and leg[12]
• The first manual wheelchair[13] to offer users mobility in either a seated or standing position
• Pattern recognition-based myoelectric control of partial-hand prostheses
• Lightweight powered lower-limb prostheses
• Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), a surgical technique that “rewires” amputated nerves and allows intuitive control and sensation of bionic arms and legs

A biomedical laboratory and equipment on the twenty-sixth floor of the hospital, comprising 10,280 square feet, enable the study of living human cells. These high-tech facilities are essential for solving patient conditions affecting the brain, spinal cord, nerves, muscles and connective tissues.

This lab is one of the few clinical labs to develop and execute both industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated research in prosthetics, orthotics, rehabilitation robotics, as well as other assistive and adaptive technologies. Scientists have worked with more than two dozen industrial wearable robotics collaborators, including Ottobock, Honda, Össur, Ekso Bionics, ReWalk Robotics, Parker Hannifin, Hocoma, B-Temia Inc and Samsung to create pathways and practice guidelines for the use of technologies for individuals with various conditions, including stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. The lab also has dozens of research collaborations with top academic and research institutions, including Walter Reed Medical Research Center, Brooke Army Medical Center Research (BAMC–Research), Northwestern University, Stanford University, Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, University of California–Irvine, University of California–Davis, LA–EPFL and ETCH in Switzerland, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and University of Twente in the Netherlands, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and Imperial College London.

This lab also conducts outcomes-based research using advanced wearable sensors[14] in addition to traditional performance-based and patient-reported measures. This lab is one of the first to deploy sensors in an inpatient, outpatient and home rehabilitation setting for various patient populations (e.g., stroke, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease, amputations). It is one of the first to create customized personal models of algorithms for multimodal sensors that monitor patients in the hospital and at home.