Greetings

Abstract

I welcome with pleasure the opportunity to attend the 14th International Biophilia Rehabilitation Conference (IBRC) to be held in a small mountainous resort of Ustron in southwestern Poland on 6-7 October 2017. The venue of the conference is a rehabilitation sanitarium. It is not an accidental choice as the conference is devoted to modern rehabilitation approaches. Rehabilitation is the field of many virtues, which focuses on the care of individuals and communities. It provides therapy, often combined with a diet or exercise regimen, for rest and recuperation so that convalescents attain and maintain optimal health and quality of life. Although rehabilitation is often understood as reestablishing bodily functions damaged after major external traumatic or diseased neurological events, it notably concerns the physical and mental spheres of the chronically ill and the aged.The IBRC is a scientifically focused conference that would lay a forum for the expert exchanges and discussions on the ways to revolutionize the rehabilitation field to be able to cope with a sharply increasing population of the elderly worldwide, and thus increasing morbidity requiring post-treatment physical and mental rehabilitation on the one side, and a deepening shortage of certified rehabilitators, which causes a dissonance between demand and need, on the other side.

The IBRC covers a wide range of critically important issues, from basic research to innovations, in the field of rehabilitation. The conference advocates a change in the rehabilitation paradigm consisting of so-called motivated rehabilitative exercise that involves the patient’s own psychosomatic skills to reacquire lost functions. Motivated rehabilitation activates the brain’s dormant reserves and appears conducive to patient satisfaction and well-being and also lowers the rehabilitation burden and costs. The conference aims to drive policy changes that would meet the health needs of patients and the expectations of society. This is a remarkable event that brings together a mix of academicians, clinical practitioners, and allied professionals interested in discussing novel research, innovative ideas, and models of best rehabilitation practice.

The 2017 IBRC is posed to restructure the rehabilitation field to help avoid becoming frail and disabled.