Rehabilitation Technology: Assistance from Hospital to Home

Abstract

Rehabilitation is essential for disabled people to achieve the highest level of functional independence, reducing or preventing impairments. Nonetheless, this process can be long and expensive. This fact together with the ageing phenomenon has become a critical issue for both clinicians and patients. In this sense, technological solutions may be beneficial since they reduce the costs and increase the number of patients per caregiver, which makes them more accessible. In addition, they provide access to rehabilitation services for those facing physical, financial, and/or attitudinal barriers. This paper presents the state of the art of the assistive rehabilitation technologies for different recovery methods starting from in-person sessions to complementary at-home activities.

Socially Assistive Robots for Older Adults and People with Autism: An Overview

“…Its main goal is to fruitfully promote the well-being and independence of persons with disabilities. Robots may assist people in a wide range of tasks at home (especially in terms of activities for daily living), and so ongoing research includes household robots [18][19][20] and rehabilitation robots [21,22], among others. In the case of assistive robots, interdisciplinarity is required to achieve the final goal, integrating research areas such as artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and machine learning techniques, among others.…”

Wearable Physiological Monitoring System Based on Electrocardiography and Electromyography for Upper Limb Rehabilitation Training

“…Although stroke rehabilitation centers offer physiological activity therapy for stroke survivors under the guidance of therapists, limited resources cannot cover the requirements of each individual [ 20 , 21 ]. Monitored physiological signals were usually explained by trained personnel to improve rehabilitation protocols, but the limited number of therapists and expensive consultation fees result in the delayed rehabilitation process of many stroke survivors [ 22 ]. Rehabilitation using hand/wrist robots is effective for the improvement of upper limb functions and could be adopted and operated by patients themselves as home treatment [ 23 , 24 ].…”

A Low-Cost Cognitive Assistant

“…One example is the work of Martinez-Martin et al [23][24][25], which proposed a rehabilitation system to provide rehabilitation monitoring at home using a humanoid robot. The goal was to use the robot's cameras to access the user's physical movements visually, using deep learning methods, and correct them using the robot screen and body to convey this information.…”