RiMS 2026: Recovery vs Compensation in MS Rehabilitation
The 31st Annual Rehabilitation in Multiple Sclerosis Conference took up a question DMTs do not answer: when should treatment aim to restore lost function, and when should it aim to work around it?
Disease-modifying therapy (DMT) has changed the trajectory of multiple sclerosis (MS), but it has not resolved what happens to function that is already lost for people with relapsing MS or to people with progressive disease when DMT effects thin out. That gap is where rehabilitation research operates, and it was the subject of the 31st Annual Rehabilitation in Multiple Sclerosis (RiMS) Conference, held June 11-13, 2026, in Prague, Czech Republic.
RiMS is a European multidisciplinary network for MS rehabilitation research and practice. The 2026 program accepted 128 abstracts from research teams in more than 25 countries, spanning neurology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing, speech and language therapy, neuropsychology, biomedical engineering, and outcomes research. The International Journal of MS Care published
The organizing theme—Recovery and Compensation in Multiple Sclerosis Rehabilitation: Rethinking Mechanisms, Decisions, and Outcomes—frames a choice clinicians make constantly but rarely make explicitly. Some strategies aim to restore function while others optimize performance through adaptation. The conference rationale treats these not as competing philosophies but as clinically meaningful options whose relative value depends on disease stage, functional reserve, patient goals, context, and available technology. The practical question is not which approach is better but which fits the individual with MS, and when the answer changes.
The abstracts are organized into 6 chapters: measurement of recovery, compensation, and progression, including biomarkers; motor recovery and adaptive compensation; participation, autonomy, and life roles, including bladder, bowel, and sexual function; psychosocial and cognitive rehabilitation; rehabilitation of communication and swallowing; and technology-enhanced rehabilitation.
Two currents run through the collection. The first is measurement: several abstracts interrogate whether the instruments the field relies on actually capture change, including COSMIN-based reviews of gait analysis tools and the 12-item MS Walking Scale, and reliable change indices for cognitive and motor screening. The second is instrumentation, including wearable inertial sensors, telerehabilitation platforms, robot-assisted gait training, fNIRS and TMS studies of walking fatigability and cortical excitability, and a machine learning model for detecting high-risk near-falls.
Methodologically the collection is broad: randomized controlled trials and secondary analyses, feasibility and pilot studies, systematic and scoping reviews, psychometric validation, qualitative research, national registry and health-data analyses, and implementation science evaluations.
For clinicians outside MS rehabilitation, the collection is a useful read on where the field’s evidence base is consolidating and on which of the functional problems individuals raise in clinic now have intervention literature behind them.
