Improvement design of the clinical upper extremity rehabilitation product for stroke patients

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to survey the usage problems and needs of the traditional UERE and commercial digital videogames applied in rehabilitation, and summarize a guideline for improvement design of the digital UERP. According to the guideline, this study was to design a Hand-rehab product design with treatment needs, and evaluate its acceptability with a questionnaire. The hardware design features includes: (1) the shapes and sizes of the operation objects can be chosen by the users to fit their own hand dimensions, (2) weight of the object can also be adjusted accordingly. The software design features are: (3) it displays visual and verbal cues, game scores, and operation times to the patients in each stage, notifying whether or not their action succeeded, (4) it allows adjustments of the reaction time to movements and the scope of sensing area of the objects. (5) The scope size of sensing area of the object can be adjusted. A total of 52 post-stroke patients were invited to assess the acceptability of Hand-rehab product. For the acceptability, most patients, after a trial with this product, reported had a positive and high satisfaction (mean 6.7, SD 0.6) with Hand-rehab product for rehabilitation.