Page 159 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

IMPLEMENTATION OF TELE-REHABILITATION SYSTEM COMBINED
WITH VIDEO CALL CENTER

Kotaro Suzuki , Yoshitoshi Murata
††
†

† Graduate School of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University Graduate School
Takizawa, Iwate, 020-0693 Japan
††Faculty of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University
Takizawa, Iwate, 020-0693 Japan

ABSTRACT

Japan’s low birthrate and rapidly aging population are
causing medical expenses to take up ever more of the
national budget and leading to a shortage of young medical
professionals. As a result, rehabilitation therapy is being
shifted from hospital-care to home-care. Several other
countries will also face the same situation in the near
future. Thus, we propose a tele-rehabilitation system
combined with a video call center to make up for the
shortage of rehabilitation therapy done by visiting
physiotherapists. A video call center operator coaches a
patient instead of a physiotherapist, and a physiotherapist Figure 1. Ratio of disease for rehabilitation
supervises multiple operators. The system focuses on
cerebrovascular patients who have a home-visit
rehabilitation or an outpatient one and uses Microsoft
KINECT to measure strain of the upper body. In this paper,
implementation of this system is mainly described.

Keywords— Rehabilitation, Tele-rehabilitation,
KINECT, low birthrate, rapidly aging population

1. INTRODUCTION

Japan’s low birthrate and rapidly aging population are
causing medical expenses to take up ever more of the
national budget and leading to a shortage of young medical
professionals. To suppress this increase in medical expenses, Figure 2. Total points of the national healthcare insurance
medical treatments, including rehabilitation, are being shifted (NHI) according to the duration of feeding period from
from hospital-care to home-care. The amount of treatment start date in Japan
rehabilitation therapy in a home done by a visiting
physiotherapist is limited by law and is insufficient for
patients to recover completely. Several other countries will It is very difficult for patients to continue the self-
also face the same situation in the near future. rehabilitation at home, so our system has two features to
Thus, we proposed a concept of tele-rehabilitation help them continuously:
system combined with a video call center (TRS) to make up  A patient can check data to see the effect of
for the shortage of rehabilitation done by visiting rehabilitation. This time, we use Microsoft
physiotherapists [1]. A call center operator coaches a patient
instead of a physiotherapist; and a physiotherapist manages KINECT [3] to measure strain of the upper body.
multiple operators as a supervisor.  A call center operator guides patients through the
Forty-four percent of rehabilitation patients suffer from therapy and encourages them with conversation
cerebrovascular diseases as shown in Figure 1 [2]. These through the Internet.
diseases also have the longest rehabilitation term as shown We believe that patients should see practical data
in Figure 2 [2]. We focus mainly for cerebrovascular showing them getting better and hear a person’s voice to
patients who have one side paralysis and are in outpatient or improve their morale and to motivate them to continue
home-visit rehabilitation. rehabilitation.

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