JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies

Recently, movement-based videogames (exergames) have gained popularity in improving the rehabilitation process after surgery. During exergaming, participants are physically challenged as the game component stimulates adherence to the training program. There is no literature on the effect of exergame training interventions in patients who received arthroscopic ankle arthrodesis.

Occupational therapy (OT) is a vital service that supports older adults’ ability to age in place. Given the barriers to accessing care, video telehealth is a means of providing OT. Even within Veterans Health Administration (VHA), a pioneer in telehealth, video telehealth by OT practitioners to serve older adults is not well understood.

Low back pain (LBP) is a highly prevalent condition affecting individuals of all ages. To manage the symptoms and prevent recurrences and flare-ups, physical activity in conjunction with self-management education is recommended. Tools such as diaries and questionnaires have been the gold standard for tracking physical activity in clinical studies. However, there are issues with consistency, accuracy, and recall with the use of these outcome measures. Given the growth of technology in today’s society, consumer-grade activity monitors have become a common and convenient method of recording physical activity data.

Current guidelines recommend supervised exercise training (SET) as a first-line treatment in patients with intermittent claudication (IC). SET has been shown to be more effective than home-based exercise therapy (HBET). However, the lack of available SET programs hampers broad SET implementation in clinical practice.

The global rise in the incidence of chronic conditions and aging is associated with increased disability. Physiotherapists and occupational therapists can mitigate the resulting burden on the health care system with their expertise in optimizing function. Rehabilitation self-management strategies can assist people with chronic conditions to accept, adjust, and manage different aspects of their daily functioning. Interventions delivered using technology have the potential to increase the accessibility, availability, and affordability of rehabilitation self-management support and services.

Technologies allowing home-based rehabilitation may be a key means of saving financial resources while also facilitating people’s access to treatment. After cochlear implantation, auditory training is necessary for the brain to adapt to new auditory signals transmitted by the cochlear implant (CI). To date, auditory training is conducted in a face-to-face setting at a specialized center. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on health care, the need for new therapeutic settings has intensified.

Speech problems are common in people living with Parkinson disease (PD), limiting communication and ultimately affecting their quality of life. Voice-assisted technology in health and care settings has shown some potential in small-scale studies to address such problems, with a retrospective analysis of user reviews reporting anecdotal communication effects and promising usability features when using this technology for people with a range of disabilities. However, there is a need for research to establish users’ perspectives on the potential contribution of voice-assisted technology for people with PD.

Physiotherapy is considered to be essential for the successful operative and nonoperative management of rotator cuff pathology; however, the extent to which patients adhere to assigned physiotherapy activities and how this impacts recovery is unknown.

The role of eHealth programs to support patients through surgical pathways, including total hip arthroplasty (THA), is rapidly growing and offers the potential to improve patient engagement, self-care, and outcomes.

Older adults and people with dementia are particularly vulnerable to social isolation. Social robots, including robotic pets, are promising technological interventions that can benefit the psychosocial health of older adults and people with dementia. However, issues such as high costs can lead to a lack of equal access and concerns about infection control. Although there are previous reviews on the use of robotic pets for older adults and people with dementia, none have included or had a focus on low-cost and familiarly and realistically designed pet robots.

Health-enabling technologies (HETs) are information and communication technologies that promote individual health and well-being. An important application of HETs is telerehabilitation for patients with musculoskeletal shoulder disorders. Currently, there is no overview of HETs that assist patients with musculoskeletal shoulder disorders when exercising at home.

Implementing exercises in the form of video games, otherwise known as exergaming, has gained recent attention as a way to combat health issues resulting from sedentary lifestyles. However, these exergaming apps have not been developed for exercises that can be performed in wheelchairs, and they tend to rely on whole-body movements.