New Telerehabilitation Services for the Elderly

Abstract

The world’s population is getting older with the percentage of people over 60 increasing more rapidly than any other age group. Telerehabilitation may help minimise the pressure this puts on the traditional healthcare system, but recent studies showed ease of use, usability, and accessibility as unsolved problems, especially for older people who may have little experience or confidence in using technology. Current migration towards multimodal interaction has benefits for seniors, allowing hearing and vision problems to be addressed by exploring redundancy and complementarity of modalities. This chapter presents and contextualizes work in progress in a new telerehabilitation service targeting the combined needs of the elderly to have professionally monitored exercises without leaving their homes with their need regarding interaction, directly related to age-related effects on, for example, vision, hearing, and cognitive capabilities. After a brief general overview of the service, additional information on its two supporting applications are presented, including information on user interfaces. First results from a preliminary evaluation are also included.

Telerehabilitation services: a successful paradigm for occupational therapy clinical services?

“…In addition, recent studies showed that ease of use, usability, and accessibility for telerehabilitation services could be sometimes unsolved problems, especially for older people and people who live in rural areas who may have little experience or confidence in using advanced technology. 27 There is a significant need for occupational therapists to document, research, and publish on the efficacy and effectiveness of clinical services provided using telehealth and telerehabilitation technologies. Telerehabilitation research needs larger and more comprehensive analyses of patient outcomes and a variety of clinical outcome measures used in telerehabilitation are needed.…”

Assessment of Ambient Assisted Living Services in a Living Lab Approach: A Methodology based on ICF

“…The evaluation methodology described was first used to evaluate the Tele-Rehabilitation service under development in the LUL project [14]. This session presents the prototype test results as an example of the methodology application.…”

“…This session presents the prototype test results as an example of the methodology application. In general terms, this service allows supervised remote exercise sessions as a way to maintain health and prevent illness [14]. Table 1 profiles the facilitators and barriers mentioned by the clients and Table 2 those mentioned by the service provider.…”

Live evaluation within ambient assisted living scenarios

“…This application allows the execution of rehabilitation services to remote and possible underserved populations, which can improve overall quality of life and prevent secondary complications [15]. This application consists on two modules, one for the user at home and another for a health professional at a remote location.…”