RehaBot: A chatbot between therapists and patients to establish telerehabilitation programs and quantify their outcome

Telerehabilitation has become part of our daily treatments, although there lacks a simple, affordable, and organized system that coordinates therapists, children, and parents in the process, while maintaining the social and motivational aspects of in-person rehabilitation. Here, we present a telerehabilitation system, that includes a chatbot and custom hardware to serve as an asynchronous communication interface to encourage the family and child to complete a tele-rehabilitation program.

The RehaBot is a chatbot integrated in the open-source Telegram instant messenger software and executed on a Raspberry PI affordable computer. RehaBot has two main outcomes: assessment and treatment. The bot can be easily upgraded to collect movement data from commercial wearable sensors (Xsens Dot) or lower-cost custom-made sensors. All data is encrypted and treated according to European data protection regulations.

First, the therapist establishes the therapeutic goals together with the family and child. Second, the therapist chooses the activities from a database (chosen from ABILHAND-Kids and ABILOCO questionnaires and other custom-made videos), that the child should perform at home to complement its rehabilitation. Third, the bot sets up an activity calendar and guides the child during the rehabilitation by showing the videos and providing instructions, that are shown in a 7-inches screen connected to the Raspberry PI. The therapist receives a weekly feedback report on exercise difficulty sensation and data retrieved from the wearable sensors.

Without replacing in-person treatments, we believe that the use of the chatbot will improve the performance and boost the motivation and adherence, while involving parents, children, and therapists with a common goal.