Eleven Months of home virtual reality telerehabilitation - Lessons learned

Abstract

Indiana University School of Medicine and the Rutgers Tele-rehabilitation Institute have collaborated for over a year on a clinical pilot study of in-home hand telerehabiltation. Virtual reality videogames were used to train three adolescents with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. Training duration varied between 6 and 11 months. The investigators summarize medical, technological, legal, safety, social, and economic issues that arose during this lengthy study. Solutions to deal with these multitude of issues are proposed. The authors stress the importance of choosing multiple outcome measures to detect clinically meaningful change. The authors believe that in-home telerehabilitation is the future of rehabilitation.