KinoHaptics: An Automated, Wearable, Haptic Assisted, Physio-therapeutic System for Post-surgery Rehabilitation and Self-care

Abstract

A carefully planned, structured, and supervised physiotherapy program, following a surgery, is crucial for the successful diagnosis of physical injuries. Nearly 50 % of the surgeries fail due to unsupervised, and erroneous physiotherapy. The demand for a physiotherapist for an extended period is expensive to afford, and sometimes inaccessible. Researchers have tried to leverage the advancements in wearable sensors and motion tracking by building affordable, automated, physio-therapeutic systems that direct a physiotherapy session by providing audio-visual feedback on patient's performance. There are many aspects of automated physiotherapy program which are yet to be addressed by the existing systems: a wide classification of patients' physiological conditions to be diagnosed, multiple demographics of the patients (blind, deaf, etc.), and the need to pursue patients to adopt the system for an extended period for self-care. In our research, we have tried to address these aspects by building a health behavior change support system called KinoHaptics, for post-surgery rehabilitation. KinoHaptics is an automated, wearable, haptic assisted, physio-therapeutic system that can be used by a wide variety of demographics and for various physiological conditions of the patients. The system provides rich and accurate vibro-haptic feedback that can be felt by the user, irrespective of the physiological limitations. KinoHaptics is built to ensure that no injuries are induced during the rehabilitation period. The persuasive nature of the system allows for personal goal-setting, progress tracking, and most importantly life-style compatibility. The system was evaluated under laboratory conditions, involving 14 users. Results show that KinoHaptics is highly convenient to use, and the vibro-haptic feedback is intuitive, accurate, and has shown to prevent accidental injuries. Also, results show that KinoHaptics is persuasive in nature as it supports behavior change and habit building. The successful acceptance of KinoHaptics, an automated, wearable, haptic assisted, physio-therapeutic system proves the need and future-scope of automated physio-therapeutic systems for self-care and behavior change. It also proves that such systems incorporated with vibro-haptic feedback encourage strong adherence to the physiotherapy program; can have profound impact on the physiotherapy experience resulting in higher acceptance rate.

Precise hepatectomy in the intelligent digital era

“…The postoperative health monitoring device can ensure to treat patients with vital signs abnormalities in a timely manner. Furthermore, wearable device can be used as effective tools to support postoperative rehabilitation training and rehabilitation evaluation [40]. The emergence and development of wearable technology provides technical support for the realization of these needs.…”

Monitoring physical activity with wearable technologies

“…Rehabilitation of patients with trauma, surgery, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and with many different conditions is an important matter in today's community. Wearable sensors tracking motion with audiovisual or "KinoHaptics" feedback might be useful in institution or home based programs (17). Another important area for wearable technology is assessment of treatment efficacy.…”

Development of an E-Health App for Lower Limb Postoperative Rehabilitation Based on Plantar Pressure Analysis

“…More importantly, it can improve medical efficiency and reduce the medical cost, but the information interaction between patients and doctors is a main challenge in this mode. With the development of "medical + internet" technology, researchers have done much work with tele-medicine methods [17,18]. In this study, an Android mobile phone application (app) is designed, through which information between patients and doctors can be transmitted immediately, such as downloading training plans to patients, uploading training data to doctors.…”