Usability of the REHOME Solution for the Telerehabilitation in Neurological Diseases: Preliminary Results on Motor and Cognitive Platforms

Abstract

The progressive aging of the population and the consequent growth of individuals with neurological diseases and related chronic disabilities, will lead to a general increase in the costs and resources needed to ensure treatment and care services. In this scenario, telemedicine and e-health solutions, including remote monitoring and rehabilitation, are attracting increasing interest as tools to ensure the sustainability of the healthcare system or, at least, to support the burden for health care facilities. Technological advances in recent decades have fostered the development of dedicated and innovative Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based solutions, with the aim of complementing traditional care and treatment services through telemedicine applications that support new patient and disease management strategies. This is the background for the REHOME project, whose technological solution, presented in this paper, integrates innovative methodologies and devices for remote monitoring and rehabilitation of cognitive, motor, and sleep disorders associated with neurological diseases. One of the primary goals of the project is to meet the needs of patients and clinicians, by ensuring continuity of treatment from healthcare facilities to the patient’s home. To this end, it is important to ensure the usability of the solution by elderly and pathological individuals. Preliminary results of usability and user experience questionnaires on 70 subjects recruited in three experimental trials are presented here.

Exergames as a rehabilitation tool to enhance the upper limbs functionality and performance in chronic stroke survivors: a preliminary study

“…As mentioned above, the MREP ( 25 ) subsystem offers numerous tasks and exergames suitable for people with neurological disorders: among them, only a specific subgroup was considered based on the primary purposes of the study, namely, to investigate the effects of gamified tasks on upper limb mobility in post-stroke subjects. The MREP consists of a vision-based system that uses a single RGB-D camera (i.e., Azure Kinect) as a non-contact sensor to collect 3D body movements in real-time.…”

“…The gamified tasks are offered in two modes, unilateral and bilateral execution, and can be appropriately configured for game difficulty according to subjects' motor conditions. One of the platforms implemented during the REHOME project ( 24 ) was used for the study, specifically the Motor Rehabilitation and Exergames platform (MREP) ( 25 ). MREP leverages a single RGB-Depth camera (specifically, Microsoft Azure Kinect DK) and its innovative body tracking algorithm that captures body movements in real-time through a deep learning approach.…”

Tele-Rehabilitation Interventions for Motor Symptoms in COVID-19 Patients: A Narrative Review

“…Tele-rehabilitation can be delivered synchronously or asynchronously, allowing for a wide range of multi-disciplinary personalized interventions (e.g. strength training, breathing exercises), also mimicking virtual reality and gaming techniques [ 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. It may apply to various fields, such as neural rehabilitation, physiotherapy [ 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ], and respiratory rehabilitation [ 50 ].…”

Measuring Brain Activation Patterns from Raw Single-Channel EEG during Exergaming: A Pilot Study

“…As previously introduced, a general trend in the last years is the increasing use of technological devices such as tablets, smartphones or computers [31]. This provides several benefits: flexibility (i.e., the same task can be adapted to different applications and needs); high interactivity and more immersive tasks; deployment of the training also through telemedicine and Internet-based solutions; automatic qualitative and quantitative feedback, available as soon as the cognitive task is completed [32].…”