Madonna’s Research Institute prides itself on staying at the forefront of rehabilitation science. Using specialized technology like the Bertec balance system, physical therapists and researchers can better understand and treat balance deficits in patients recovering from serious injury or illness.
The Bertec is a virtual reality platform equipped with force plates that sense where a person is in space. A half-dome screen creates an immersive environment with a variety of balance activities, tests and games, giving patients real-time feedback on their movements, even when their feet remain still.
“Basically, the Bertec gives feedback on how far someone can move their center of gravity in place,” Jake Massey, PT, DPT, CSCS, a Madonna physical therapist said.
Massey says patients with a wide variety of diagnoses can benefit from using the Bertec. The machine is also helpful to clinicians, as it helps them pinpoint what is causing a patient’s balance issues.
“It has different assessments that can help us tease out exactly which balance system might be impaired or which balance system we might have to work on in therapy,” Massey said. “We can use tests to isolate someone’s visual system or vestibular system or somatosensory system, and it really lets us objectively identify specific deficits that then we can cater specific interventions to.”
This ensures that balance training is not just working on compensation techniques but really restoring a person’s balance. Massey says this has proved beneficial for both the concussion and post-COVID patient populations.
“This has been really helpful in giving these patients that knowledge of what’s going on and what’s causing their symptoms, so we can make a very concrete plan of what to do about it,” Massey said.
For brain injury survivors like Kate Via, the Bertec has led to substantial improvement in reaction time and dual tasking—skills that are especially important to the new mother.
Kate was 20 weeks pregnant when she was in a serious car accident in November 2024. She had had four strokes and a diffuse axonal injury (DAI). Miraculously, her son Isaac was born healthy in March 2025.