Development and validation of tele-health system for stroke rehabilitation

Tele-rehabilitation refers to the use of information and communication technologies to provide rehabilitation services to people in their homes or other environments. The objective of this paper was to present the development, validation, and usability testing of a low-cost, markerless, full-body tracking virtual reality system designed to provide remote rehabilitation of the upper extremity in patients with stroke. The Methods and Results sections present the progress of our work on system development, system validations, and a feasibility/usability study. We conclude with a brief summary of the initial stages of an intervention study and a discussion of our findings in the context of the next steps. The validation study demonstrated considerable accuracy for some outcomes (i.e., shoulder "pitch" angle, elbow flexion, trunk forward, and side-to-side deviation). In addition, positive responses were received from the clients who participated in the feasibility study. We are currently in the process of improving the accuracy of the system and analyzing results from a randomized clinical trial, which assessed the effectiveness of the system to improve upper extremity function post-stroke.