Introducing an user-tailored rehabilitation system for patients in their home and work environment

Abstract

Due to the increasing number of patients who need orthopedic interventions, current research focuses progressively more on individualized physiotherapy and postoperative treatment. The restoration and therefore unrestricted movement are strongly connected to the accomplishment of physiotherapeutic exercises (form, repetitions and reproducibility of movement). If exercises are performed at home, less consultation with the therapist and high personal responsibility of the patient is required. In this paper an intelligent cheap and user friendly training system for use in home environment is presented. It evaluates the physiotherapeutic exercise using objective parameters by guiding the patient through the exercise and analyzing his reactions. The system itself was evaluated with 46 persons who performed standard physiotherapeutic exercises. The results show a significant increase in reproducibility of the exercises at home using the training system.