Research on Upper Extremity Rehabilitation Product Use Needs and Development Suggestions

Abstract

Stroke is the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability. In order to restore activities of daily living, all patients need to receive occupational therapy. Rehabilitation products are an important equipment for rehabilitation treatment. The purpose of this research is to investigate the current situation, problems and needs of upper extremity rehabilitation products, and to propose design development suggestions for rehabilitation products design. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) Types of upper extremity rehabilitation products used in clinic can be divided into four categories based on the technology: Traditional rehabilitation products, Digital rehabilitation products, Rehabilitation products with desktop virtual reality, Immersive virtual reality product. (2) The problems of clinical upper extremity rehabilitation products were proposed: expensive to maintain, single function and limited therapeutic actions, inconvenient to store, and cannot give the treatment progress suggestions to each patient. (3) All therapists think that virtual reality games intervention therapy can promote the interest and motivation for stroke patients. (4) The space applied of the rehabilitation treatment room is one of the factors that must be considered in rehabilitation products design. (5) Four development suggestions of rehabilitation product design were proposed: to provide a visualized expected treatment progress, to design home-based rehabilitation products, to assist patients and their family members in psychological development after stroke, Provide affordable rehabilitation products for families with different income levels. Results of this research will provide references for the rehabilitation product industry, medical industry, and improve social welfare.