Our History
A History of Rehabilitation, Innovation, and Work
The history of Matheson Development reaches back more than five decades, to a time when occupational rehabilitation was still emerging as a distinct area of clinical practice.
The story begins with Dr. Leonard N. Matheson and his colleagues at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in California during the 1970s.
What grew from that work became much more than a single company. It became a continuing effort to better understand human functional ability, develop meaningful ways to evaluate work capacity, and help people bridge the gap between medical rehabilitation and productive work.
That work has been shaped by many people over many decades. Matheson Development is proud to be part of that history.
The 1970s: The Beginning
During the 1970s, Dr. Leonard Matheson and colleagues at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center began developing new approaches to occupational rehabilitation.
The focus was practical.
A person recovering from injury or disability might be medically stable, but that did not necessarily answer the question of whether they could safely and successfully return to work.
Rehabilitation needed to address what people could actually do.
Len's work at Rancho Los Amigos helped establish a model in which meaningful activity and work demands became an important part of rehabilitation. His early work included the development of approaches to work capacity evaluation, work hardening, and functional assessment.
The work was collaborative from the beginning.
Occupational therapists, psychologists, physicians, and other rehabilitation professionals contributed to the developing field, bringing different perspectives to the same fundamental question:
How can rehabilitation help a person move from medical recovery toward meaningful participation in work and life?
The Development of Work Hardening
One of the most important developments of this early period was work hardening.
Dr. Matheson worked closely with occupational therapist Linda Dempster Ogden in developing the early concepts and materials that helped shape this approach. Their work emphasized rehabilitation through increasingly work-related activities, with the goal of improving function and preparing injured workers for a return to employment.
In 1985, Matheson, Ogden, Kristi Violette, and Karen Schultz published Work Hardening: Occupational Therapy in Industrial Rehabilitation in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy.
Their work described work hardening as an emerging service for people with industrial injuries and placed it within the broader tradition of occupational therapy and industrial rehabilitation.
The significance of this work was not simply the creation of another rehabilitation program.
It represented a shift in thinking:
Rehabilitation could be connected directly to the functional demands of work.
That idea remains central to occupational rehabilitation today.
From Work Capacity Evaluation to Functional Capacity Evaluation
As occupational rehabilitation developed, clinicians needed increasingly objective ways to evaluate functional ability.
The language and methods evolved over time. What was often described as Work Capacity Evaluation (WCE) became increasingly associated with Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) as standardized assessment approaches developed.
FCE did not emerge from the work of one person or one organization.
It was shaped by many clinicians, researchers, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and other rehabilitation professionals who were working to develop more consistent and meaningful ways to understand functional ability.
Dr. Leonard Matheson was an important contributor to this development.
So were many of his colleagues and contemporaries.
Colleagues Who Helped Shape the Field
Susan Isernhagen became one of the most influential figures in the development and standardization of functional capacity evaluation. Her work helped establish methods for evaluating functional performance and applying those findings to work-related decision making.
Dennis L. Hart was another important colleague in the development of functional evaluation and rehabilitation ergonomics.
Len, Susan, and Dennis worked together extensively. They co-authored guidelines for Functional Capacity Evaluation and later published research and professional work addressing FCE, ergonomics, work injury prevention, functional performance, and the relationship between assessment findings and return to work.
Their collaboration illustrates something important about the history of FCE:
It was a developing field, built through the combined efforts of people who were asking difficult clinical questions and trying to create better ways to answer them.
The Matheson story is therefore not a story of one person inventing an entire field.
It is a story of collaboration, research, clinical experimentation, professional debate, and continual refinement.
ERIC and the Growth of Occupational Rehabilitation
The Employment and Rehabilitation Institute of California, known as ERIC, grew from the early work of Leonard Matheson and his colleagues.
ERIC provided consultation to insurance carriers, functional capacity evaluation services, rehabilitation services, and professional education.
In Anaheim, California, ERIC established what was then one of the largest free-standing occupational rehabilitation centers in the United States.
The ERIC Rehabilitation Center became an important setting for clinical practice and professional education.
A professional residency program was established in 1986, providing another avenue for rehabilitation professionals to learn and apply emerging approaches to occupational rehabilitation.
By the mid-1980s, professional education included courses in:
- Work Capacity Evaluation
- Work Tolerance Screening
- Work Hardening
The organization was growing alongside the field itself.
Roy Matheson and the Expansion of Professional Education
The Matheson story took another important step in 1988, when Roy Matheson founded Roy Matheson & Associates.
Roy brought a different but complementary set of strengths to the work.
Where Leonard's career centered heavily on research, clinical development, and assessment, Roy focused on education, communication, professional training, business development, and practical application.
Roy helped bring emerging approaches in occupational rehabilitation to a broader professional audience.
Through training, workshops, professional resources, mentoring, and certification, he helped clinicians learn how to apply developing concepts in functional evaluation, work rehabilitation, ergonomics, and return-to-work practice.
His contribution was an important part of turning a developing body of research into something that could be shared, taught, and applied by rehabilitation professionals.
The 1990s: Research and Human Performance
As occupational rehabilitation continued to develop, the work surrounding ERIC evolved toward research and human performance.
The clinical organization transitioned toward the ERIC Human Performance Laboratory, under Dr. Matheson's direction.
The focus increasingly included objective measurement of human performance, functional assessment, work capacity, and the development of standardized approaches to evaluation.
During this period, Dr. Matheson's academic career also expanded.
In 1992, he joined the Program in Occupational Therapy at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, initially part time and later as a full-time faculty member.
His research and teaching continued to influence the development of functional assessment, occupational rehabilitation, and return-to-work practice.
EPIC and EpicRehab
The work continued to evolve through EPIC, the Employment Potential Improvement Corporation, and later EpicRehab.
EPIC was established to make applications of the work being developed through the Human Performance Laboratory available beyond the research setting.
Over time, the organization continued to change as Dr. Matheson's academic and clinical work developed.
After his university career, the organization was reorganized as EpicRehab.
EpicRehab continued the tradition of research, clinical resources, professional education, publications, and development of functional assessment approaches.
It became another chapter in a much longer story.
Today, EpicRehab is best understood as part of the history and legacy of this work rather than as a current operating business.
The ideas, research, and assessment approaches developed through ERIC, the Human Performance Laboratory, EPIC, and EpicRehab continue to influence occupational rehabilitation.
2007: Matheson Development
In 2007, Erin and Jon Matheson established Matheson Development.
At the time, organizations associated with the Matheson family needed a reliable manufacturer to build, assemble, and distribute rehabilitation equipment.
Erin and Jon saw an opportunity to do more than manufacture existing products.
They wanted to develop new ones.
Matheson Development began developing equipment with the Progressive Occupational Demand System.
The successful development of that product led to additional work in product development, manufacturing, assembly, packaging, distribution, and equipment support.
Over time, Matheson Development became a distinct company focused on developing and supplying practical equipment for rehabilitation professionals.
The company's role was no longer simply to carry forward existing products.
It was to continue the tradition of asking:
What do clinicians need next?
2020: A New Home in Oregon
In 2020, Matheson Development moved to Corvallis, Oregon.
From our Oregon home, we continue to develop, manufacture, supply, and support rehabilitation equipment for professionals throughout the United States and internationally.
The location changed.
The purpose did not.
A Continuing Legacy
The Matheson history is not the story of a single company.
It is the story of people who worked together across generations to improve the way rehabilitation professionals understand human function and help people return to meaningful work.
It includes researchers and clinicians.
Occupational therapists and physical therapists.
Educators and entrepreneurs.
People such as Leonard Matheson, Linda Dempster Ogden, Susan Isernhagen, Dennis L. Hart, Roy Matheson, and many other colleagues and professionals whose work helped shape the field.
Each contributed a different piece.
Some developed clinical approaches.
Some conducted research.
Some created assessment methods.
Some taught.
Some built organizations.
Some turned ideas into practical tools.
And some helped carry those ideas forward to the next generation.
The Matheson Story Today
Today, that legacy continues through several connected areas of work.
Research and clinical innovation continue to influence new approaches to functional assessment and neurorehabilitation.
Matheson Education and Training Solutions carries forward the educational and professional-development side of the Matheson tradition.
Matheson Development turns clinical concepts and rehabilitation needs into practical equipment and assessment tools.
And the field itself continues to evolve.
Functional capacity evaluation is expanding beyond traditional physical measures.
Cognitive function and neurorehabilitation are becoming increasingly important.
Technology is creating new opportunities for assessment and rehabilitation.
And clinicians continue to need better ways to connect what they observe in an evaluation with what a person actually needs to do in the real world.
That brings us back to the question that helped shape this work in the first place:
What can this person actually do—and how can we help them do more?
That question has guided generations of Matheson work.
It continues to guide ours.
And it will shape what comes next.