Sensors and telemedicine for post-stroke walking rehabilitation

The telemedicine platform antari Home Care helps to improve post-stroke walking rehabilitation in the home. Used in the framework of the European SwitHome project, primed by EIT Health (a Knowledge and Innovation Community of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology), it enables patients to carry out this rehabilitation at home under the eye of a specialist.

SwitHome’s smart insoles record such walking data as patients’ stride distance, gait, etc, and also map the pressure at different points. A Smartphone app and the telemedicine platform antari Home Care then enables the specialist, working from this data, to monitor the patient’s progress and adapt the rehabilitation plan to suit. As well as providing the therapist with this necessary monitoring information, the system also gives patients real-time feedback.

The advantages of rehabilitation supervised and guided in the patient’s home are numerous. The real-time feedback boosts patient motivation, encouraging them to involve themselves in their own recovery. They can also monitor their own rehabilitation at home under medical supervision but without having to travel elsewhere, making the whole process more convenient and less troublesome.

Personalization and cost saving

In 2016 a total of 12 million people in Europe suffered a stroke calling for walking rehab afterwards. SwitHome for self-rehab at home enables physical rehabilitation units to attend more people with the same human resources, working with more data that enables specialists to personalize the therapy and make the whole system much more efficient. Drawing from the technological solution built into the Antari telemedicine platform, patients and clinicians work jointly, each from a different place and with synchronized monitoring.

The average cost of each clinic rehabilitation session, factoring in the patient’s transport costs there and back, comes out at over €50. With SwitHome each home session, with remote and synchronized specialist supervision, costs €15, without any transport costs tagged on. This impinges directly, and favorably, on the country’s healthcare expenditure and the patients’ outlay.

It should be pointed out here that though the elderly are statistically more likely to suffer a stroke, the percentage of young people has been increasing lately. This is due to such factors as a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, drinking, obesity and cholesterol or high blood pressure. Early detection followed by suitable rehab are essential to recover from the stroke with the fewest possible aftereffects. If we also factor in that by 2035 the number of stroke sufferers will have increased by 34%, according to London’s King’s College report “The Burden of Stroke in Europe”, this explains the European Union’s support for post-stroke recovery projects like SwitHome.

Led by the innovation and technology-transfer association “Instituto Pedro Nunes” (Coimbra), the project’s members besides GMV are the University Medical Center Groningen (the Netherlands), Coimbra University and the center for healthcare, teaching and research services Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu (Barcelona).