Telerehabilitation Tool Research Articles

Cardiac patients’ experiences with a telerehabilitation web portal: Implications for eHealth literacy

ObjectiveThe aims of this study are two-fold: 1) To explore how cardiac patients experience their use of a telerehabilitation tool for recuperation from surgery, and 2) To study how the patients’ use of the interactive ‘Active Heart’ web portal affected their eHealth literacy skills. MethodsThe ‘Active Heart’ telerehabilitation web portal offers patients and their relatives information and exercises for recovery from cardiac surgery. 109 cardiac patients were using the Active Heart web portal for a duration of three months. Results49 patients completed questionnaires that were administered both before and after their use of the portal, resulting in a 45% response rate. Respondents had a mean age of 60.64 ± 10.75 years, and 82% of the respondents were males. The respondents had a positive impression of Active Heart, reporting that it was easy to access, user-friendly, and written in an understandable language. The patients’ eHealth literacy skills increased during the trial period. ConclusionUse of a cardiac telerehabilitation web portal can be beneficial for patient education and can increase cardiac patients’ eHealth literacy skills. Practice implicationsOnline telerehabilitation portals may be used as a tool in patient education and cardiac rehabilitation.

Computer-based cognitive rehabilitation: the CoRe system

Purpose: This work aims at providing a tool for supporting cognitive rehabilitation. This is a wide field, that includes a variety of diseases and related clinical pictures; for this reason the need arises to have a tool available that overcomes the difficulties entailed by what currently is the most common approach, that is, the so-called pen and paper rehabilitation. Methods: We first organized a big number of stimuli in an ontology that represents concepts, attributes and a set of relationships among concepts. Stimuli may be words, sounds, 2D and 3D images. Then, we developed an engine that automatically generates exercises by exploiting that ontology. The design of exercises has been carried on in synergy with neuropsychologists and speech therapists. Solutions have been devised aimed at personalizing the exercises according to both patients’ preferences and performance. Results: Exercises addressed to rehabilitation of executive functions and aphasia-related diseases have been implemented. The system has been tested on both healthy volunteers (n = 38) and patients (n = 9), obtaining a favourable rating and suggestions for improvements. Conclusions: We created a tool able to automate the execution of cognitive rehabilitation tasks. We hope the variety and personalization of exercises will allow to increase compliance, particularly from elderly people, usually neither familiar with technology nor particularly willing to rely on it. The next step involves the creation of a telerehabilitation tool, to allow therapy sessions to be undergone from home, thus guaranteeing continuity of care and advantages in terms of time and costs for the patients and the National Healthcare System (NHS).Implications for rehabilitationCognitive impairments can greatly impact an individual's existence, appreciably reducing his abilities and autonomy, as well as sensibly lowering his quality of life. Cognitive rehabilitation can be used to restore lost brain function or slow down degenerative diseases.Computerization of rehabilitation entails many advantages, but patients – especially elderly people – might be less prone to the use of technology and consequently reluctant towards this innovative therapeutic approach.Our software system, CoRe, supports a therapist during the administration of rehabilitation sessions: exercises can be generated dynamically, thus reducing repetitivity, and patients' performance trends automatically analysed to facilitate the assessment of their progress.Tests performed on both healthy subjects and patients provided useful information that allowed us to define an implementation strategy able to reduce patients' resistance to computerized rehabilitation as much as possible.

Telerehabilitation Tools for the Provision of Remote Speech-Language Treatment

Telerehabilitation is the method of using communication technologies to provide rehabilitation at a distance. Advancements in videoconferencing and networking technologies present opportunities to deliver rehabilitation services to patients at home, at school, in the workplace, and in the community. Speech-language treatment is an area of rehabilitation well suited for telerehabilitation. This article will review the technology for performing remote speech-language diagnosis and treatment for patients after stroke. Development of a telerehabilitation system incorporating computerized therapy tasks with a touchscreen interface is described. Such a system enhances off-the-shelf videoconferencing equipment and extends the potential utility and effectiveness of telerehabilitation sessions.