Exploring seamless home rehabilitation: a tool to enhance hand function through integration with ADL

OBJECTIVE: Hand impairments greatly impact the execution of daily activities. Home rehabilitation is essential to improve functional tasks and prevent function decline, but also tends to be a lengthy process where patients lose motivation over time. In our approach, we want to bypass the need for intrinsic motivation and offer hand-function exercises that are seamlessly integrated into activities of daily living. We do this by integrating exercises with tools that are used during daily routines. In this paper, we present the design of an interactive toothbrush that integrates wrist exercises with the routine of brushing teeth: TumbleTooth.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: To assess how well the tool allows for seamless integration of the exercise and the daily activity, we performed usability tests, semi-structured interviews, and a dual task on cognitive workload. The evaluation involved two groups of ten healthy participants and two stroke survivors. For the healthy participants the tests were conducted in a lab setting, for the stroke survivors at their homes.

RESULTS: Both the quantitative and qualitative data suggest a high seamlessness indication of our rehabilitation tool. Users show minimal cognitive workload while using it and appreciate the ease of use of the system.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Our work presents design features that must be considered when designing seamless home rehabilitation devices.