Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: May 7, 2025
Date Accepted: Dec 23, 2025
Telerehabilitation Following Stroke: Development of Training Content and Evaluation of Usability and Functionality of an Application-Based Training Program
ABSTRACT
Background:
Enhancing rehabilitation methods for stroke patients is essential, particularly during the transition from inpatient to outpatient care. Digital applications are being developed to provide telerehabilitation programs. The existing virtual blended care environment Blended Clinic provides an application-based training platform for patients after a stroke and comprises three main components: training, coaching and monitoring. This study assesses the usability and user experience of the novel Swiss Tele-Assisted Rehabilitation and Training program (START) on the Blended Clinic platform in patients after stroke and therapists.
Objective:
The objective of the present study was to assess the perceptions of both therapists and post-stroke patients regarding the usability and functionality of the new Swiss Tele-Assisted Rehabilitation and Training (START) program for these patients, provided via the updated Blended Clinic platform.
Methods:
START was developed within three workshops and an online survey. Eight patients after stroke and ten therapists took part in a single-center usability study. All participants were introduced to the Blended Clinic platform and subsequently utilized it independently. The application, including START, was evaluated by both user groups based on the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS-G). Additionally, feedback was collected, observations were documented and adherence metrics were calculated.
Results:
The mean SUS scores were 87.2±10.8 for patients and 83.3±11.3 for therapists. The MARS- G scores were 3.9±0.5 for patients and 4.1±0.4 for therapists for categories A-D. User experience rated 4.1±0.5 for patients, while device usability was 3.8±0.8 for patients and 4.2±0.5 for therapists. Adherence to the training schedule ranged from 16.7% to 80% of the planned sessions.
Conclusions:
The Blended Clinic telerehabilitation platform was considered user-friendly, with good usability ratings from stroke patients and therapists. Recommendations for increasing compliance are provided.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.