Telerehabilitation

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Telerehabilitation (or e-rehabilitation^[1][2][3] is the delivery of rehabilitation services over telecommunication networks and the internet. Telerehabilitation allows patients to interact with providers remotely and can be used both to assess patients and to deliver therapy. Fields of medicine that utilize telerehabilitation include: physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, audiology, and psychology. Therapy sessions can be individual or community-based. Types of therapy available include motor training exercises, speech therapy, virtual reality, robotic therapy, goal setting, and group exercise.

Commonly used modalities include webcams, videoconferencing, phone lines, videophones and webpages containing rich Internet applications. The visual nature of telerehabilitation technology limits the types of rehabilitation services that can be provided. Telerehabilitation is therefore often combined with other modalities such as in-person therapy.

Important areas of telerehabilitation research include the investigation of new and emerging rehabilitation modalities as well as comparisons between telerehabilitation and in-person therapy in terms of patient functional outcomes, cost, patient satisfaction, and compliance.

As of 2006, only a few health insurers in the United States will reimburse for telerehabilitation services. If the research shows that tele-assessments and tele-therapy are equivalent to clinical encounters, it is more likely that insurers and Medicare will extend coverage to certain telerehabilitation services as was the case during the pandemic (see also Occupational Therapy).