JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Telerehabilitation programs are designed with the aim of improving the quality of services as well as overcoming existing limitations in terms of resource management and accessibility of services.

Objective:

This review collects recent studies investigating telerehabilitation programs for patients with knee osteoarthritis while focusing on the technologies and the services provided in the program.

Methods:

Studies published in English since 2000 were retrieved from EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, PubMed, Physiotherapy Evidence Database, and PsycINFO databases. The search keywords ‘telerehabilitation’, ‘telehealth’, ‘telemedicine’, ‘teletherapy’ and ‘ehealth’ were combined with ‘knee’ and ‘rehabilitation’ to generate a dataset of studies for screening and review. The final group of studies reviewed here includes those that implemented the tele-treatment for patients for a period of at least two weeks of rehabilitation.

Results:

In total, 1198 studies were screened, and the full text of 154 studies were reviewed. Of these, 38 studies were included, and data were extracted accordingly. Four modes of telerehabilitation service delivery were identified: phone-based, video-based, sensor-based, and expert system based telerehabilitation. The intervention services provided in the studies included information, training, communication, monitoring and tracking in the studies. Video-based telerehabilitation programs were frequently utilized. Among the identified services, information, and educational material were introduced in only one-quarter of the studies.

Conclusions:

The video-based telerehabilitation programs can be considered as the best alternative solution to conventional treatment. The study shows, within recent years, sensor-based solutions have also become more popular due to rapid developments in sensor technology. Nevertheless, communication and human-generated feedback remain as important as monitoring and intervention services.