Introduction:
Physical therapy is a physical therapist's service to help people develop, maintain, and re-establish movement and functional capacity at any age. Functional movement is essential for health and high quality of life. Hence physiotherapy is required when movement and function are endangered. Physical therapists communicate and collaborate in teams with patients, other health professionals, families, caregivers, and the community to prevent, treat, and rehabilitate difficulties. In some cases, physical therapy interventions may be used as stand-alone treatments, but they are more often used as part of an extensive rehabilitation program.
What Is Telerehabilitation in Physiotherapy?
Telehealth is based on telecommunications and virtual technology to deliver health treatments outside traditional health centers. Telehealth is a dynamic idea that changes as requirements and technology change; concepts like eHealth, mHealth, cyber-health, virtual health, and digital therapies have become widespread.
Telerehabilitation is an important tool that connects practitioners and patients through technology. Telerehabilitation has been frequently advocated because of its previous success in the rehabilitation of certain illnesses. However, there are concerns about how well it can bridge the gap between physical contact and physiotherapy, as well as its effectiveness in terms of outcomes and satisfaction across a wide range of illnesses and populations, not to mention the cost and impact, particularly in developing nations.
What Is the Effectiveness of Telerehabilitation in Physical Therapy?
Telerehabilitation is a sub-discipline of telehealth. It comprises a telecommunications technology system to control or monitor remote rehabilitation. It is presented as a technique to improve accessibility and attention continuity among vulnerable, geographically isolated groups with impairments, potentially saving time and money. The advantages and limitations of digital practice have lately been discussed in the field of physical therapy; the goal is to promote the successful provision of physical therapy services by improving access to attention. Education on health conditions, prescription and advice on physical activity or an exercise plan, and follow-up and monitoring of the progress of patients who were previously treated face-to-face have all been identified as conditions or circumstances in which physical therapy can be practiced digitally.
What Are the Advantages of Telerehabilitation in Physiotherapy?
Online consulting for various health conditions is done through healthcare websites. To receive assistance, the patient must first register on the website, following which they may avail of consultations. Smartphone applications have become increasingly popular since they are easy to download and they boost the degree of treatment for persons suffering from physical and mental illnesses. Furthermore, individuals can participate in group therapy or group sessions through video conferencing, which can help inspire them. These are also pleasant and non-threatening techniques to treat worried patients.
Exercises in the form of games can be offered to children, which may be beneficial. Group yoga and fitness classes might be held to combat the effects of the sedentarism epidemic. Online peer review groups also provide large amounts of useful information. Meeting other people who are going through the same situation often helps patients feel less alone. This will have a favorable effect and can provide relief. Many tele-physiotherapy treatments are delivered without having to see the patient in person. Telephysiotherapy treatments can control physiological signals such as heart rate, oxygen saturation, electrocardiograms (ECG), and joint motion frequency in specific populations such as those with cardiorespiratory problems or orthopedic issues.
Although some telephysiotherapy procedures necessitate custom-built devices, others have had similarly great results using off-the-shelf consumer technology and software. The device's pervasive design opens up new options for telephysiotherapy, such as activity tracking, sound and light warnings to decide workout tempo and length, and real-time feedback on exercise performance. Tele-Physio-Therapy (TPT) uses networking tools to help patients receive physiotherapy in the comfort of their homes, either via audio or video calls.
Telephysiotherapy offers a wide range of recovery and rehabilitation services, including diagnosis, surveillance, detection, treatment, assistance, training, support, and counseling. TPT, which includes the use of telecommunication technology to provide information for rehabilitation activities to patients at home who are remote from physiotherapy clinics, could be considered to address these concerns.
What Are the Disadvantages of Telerehabilitation in Physiotherapy?
Though telerehabilitation has a lot of advantages, some disadvantages of telerehabilitation should not be neglected, such as patient cynicism resulting from remote contact with their doctors or rehabilitators. Tele-rehabilitation has the potential to transform the healthcare industry by allowing people to receive long-term outpatient therapy. To give telerehabilitation to those in need, many websites, applications, and even videoconferencing are used. Various applications that are easily accessible on cell phones can be used to promote fitness and physical activity during these challenging circumstances. To avoid errors during treatment, live therapy with the use of videoconferencing can be provided with direct patient monitoring. This improves the outcome of treatment.
Why Is Telerehabilitation in Physiotherapy Important?
Rehabilitation is important to enhance people's functioning and quality of life by improving their ability to live, work and learn as feasibly as possible. The consequences affect the neighborhood, society, and economy. While rehabilitation is a multifaceted, multi-component, and multidisciplinary intervention, the minimal components necessary are determined by the individual health condition and other characteristics of the health system or resources available, which frequently involve physical therapy.
When movement and function are endangered, a physical therapist's interventions are required to build, preserve, and re-establish movement and functional capacity, with the understanding that functional movement is essential to maintaining health and optimal quality of life.
Despite the fact that the benefits of rehabilitation and physical therapy are widely recognized, these services are underutilized. For one thing, the available services or patient resources are limited, and for another, high demand causes service saturation and the formation of waiting lists and access restrictions to become a reality.
Alternative rehabilitation models have been devised employing new resources such as digital practice to enhance coverage in this circumstance, where rehabilitation is important but insufficiently administered. As a result, telerehabilitation, which is considered a branch of telehealth, is set up as a system for the control or monitoring of remote rehabilitation using telecommunications technologies, with the goal of increasing accessibility and improving continuity of care in vulnerable, geographically remote populations with disabilities while saving time and resources in health care.
What Are the Barriers to Successful Telerehabilitation Use in Physiotherapy?
The key obstacles to successful telerehabilitation were the absence of appropriate equipment, inadequate network coverage, and a lack of hospital and IT assistance.
Telerehabilitation has additional drawbacks, including difficulty recognizing some physical abnormalities, a lack of patient and therapist privacy, a lack of hands-on interventions, and a perceived lack of clinical success. Some physiotherapists have refused to employ telerehabilitation because they do not believe its effectiveness in diagnosing some patient problems. They have consistently preferred in-person sessions, according to their managers. Patients who are elderly or have a low level of education have been identified as hurdles because they have difficulty using smart technology and comprehending the approaches that can be applied through specific applications. Furthermore, individuals may not respond appropriately to physiotherapy instructions provided through telerehabilitation devices. One way to circumvent this is to have the patient request their relatives or friends who are good with technology to assist them during their virtual sessions.
Conclusion:
During difficult periods, digitization and automation have proven to be effective solutions. With the help of numerous smartphone applications and websites for online consultation, telemedicine and telephysiotherapy have transformed the world. Thus, telemedicine and telephysiotherapy improve the quality of treatment for persons with physical and mental health problems, minimize hospital costs, strengthen traditional face-to-face practice, and improve treatment adherence and satisfaction. Telerehabilitation is an essential modification to ensure the continued delivery of physiotherapy services during pandemics and other unavoidable circumstances. However, further high-quality research is needed to assess its usefulness and effects. Also, measures should be taken to ensure that developing countries accommodate the increased demand for physiotherapy services through telerehabilitation.
