Tele-rehabilitation: present and future.
During the last decade we assisted to relevant progress in rehabilitation studies and in technological development. From the combination of these issues rises the tele-rehabilitation--a subfield of telemedicine consisting of a system to control rehabilitation "at distance"--as an actual possibility of application and a promising development in the future. The present paper offers a short review of the state of the art in the field of tele-rehabilitation, with a special focus on upper limb tele-rehabilitation. The experience is also briefly reported of the preliminary application of the H-CAD (home care activity desk) system and the HELLODOC (Healthcare service linking tele-rehabilitation to disabled people and clinicians) tele-rehabilitation service, conducted by the authors within two European projects in the period 2003-2005 and 2005-2007 respectively.
Zampolini
Mauro
M
ASL n 3, Umbria, Unità Organica di Riabilitazione Intensiva Neuromotoria, Trevi, Perugia, Italy. m.zampolini@asl3.umbria.it
Todeschini
Elisabetta
E
Bernabeu Guitart
Montserrat
M
Hermens
Hermie
H
Ilsbroukx
Stephan
S
Macellari
Velio
V
Magni
Riccardo
R
Rogante
Marco
M
Scattareggia Marchese
Sandro
S
Vollenbroek
Miriam
M
Giacomozzi
Claudia
C
D005062:European Union; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D012046:Rehabilitation / Q000266:history* / Q000639:trends*; D012371:Robotics; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000266:history* / Q000639:trends*