Research grant awarded to RehabCoach – a digital platform that supports remote rehabilitation

The grant will be used to develop a first proof-of-concept for remote technology-supported interventions that will be generalizable to other rehabilitation applications. The interdisciplinary research group, led by RESC members Dr Olivier Lambercy, Senior Scientist at the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory (RELab) at D-HEST, and Dr Tobias Kowatsch, Professor for Digital Health Interventions at the University of Zurich (UZH), Director at the School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen (HSG), and Scientific Director of the Centre for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI) at ETH Zurich (D-MTEC), UZH, and HSG, will start the project in October 2022 and run for three years. Funding for this research calls is supported by RESC’s strategic partner Suva within the framework of external page ETH’s Rehabilitation Initiative.

Abstract: RehabCoach, proof-of-concept for remote technology-supported rehab interventions

The dose of rehabilitation therapy patients receive after a neurological injury (e.g., traumatic brain injury or stroke) is limited due to a lack of solutions for quality remote, unsupervised rehabilitation once discharged from the hospital. As a result, most patients are left with remaining upper limb impairments negatively affecting their quality of life.

In this project, we propose RehabCoach, a novel digital platform to support remote rehabilitation. It builds on an interactive smartphone-based app that can act as an intermediate layer between patients, healthcare professionals and rehabilitation technologies. RehabCoach will help plan unsupervised therapy and set daily goals, send reminders to the user via text messages, support basic conversations via an artificial-intelligence-based chat function, provide access to information (e.g., media) and collect data via questionnaires (e.g., about the current health status) or metrics related to app use.

Dr Olivier Lambercy on the motivation for the project: “There is a need for novel rehabilitation solutions to help patients after a neurological injury engage in quality therapy without having to rely on physical access to healthcare facilities. We are developing robotic technologies promoting rehabilitation at the home of patients, but for these to be optimally used and accepted by patients, there is a strong need for a digital platform that could serve as an interface between end-users, healthcare practitioners and researchers developing the technologies. Based on a personalized interactive mobile phone app, RehabCoach will do just that - motivate and coach patients to engage in remote rehabilitation, while helping us collect essential data on technology usage as well as rehabilitation progress”.

First, we will derive key requirements to develop and optimize RehabCoach and test its utility and usability together with patients and healthcare professionals. We will then investigate the feasibility of RehabCoach and whether it is acceptable for neurological patients to use the app over multiple days in the rehabilitation clinic. Lastly, we will combine RehabCoach with a unique active robotic tool (ReHandyBot) designed to deliver unsupervised hand rehabilitation in a safe and efficient manner and evaluate this approach in a pilot study where this technology will be deployed at the home of patients.

We expect this approach to increase patients’ motivation and engagement during remote, unsupervised rehabilitation with the robotic device and through that increase the dose of quality therapy after discharge, leading to improved health outcomes. Furthermore, this technology will remotely collect “big health data” to help monitor and document rehabilitation processes. This project will serve as a first proof-of-concept for remote technology-supported interventions that will be generalizable to other rehabilitation applications.

Date published: 01.02.2022
Submission deadline: 01.05.2022
Project timeline: Q4/2022 – Q4/2025

Interdisciplinary project team:

Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory RElab
external page Centre for Digital Health Interventions