Therapists' Opinions on Telehealth, Robotics, and Socially Assistive
Robot-Augmented Telepresence Systems for Rehabilitation
- Michael Sobrepera ,
- Vera Lee ,
- Michelle Johnson
Abstract
Shortages in therapists, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, have created
a gap in care for people with cerebral palsy, stroke, and many other
conditions requiring rehabilitation.
Socially assistive robots and telehealth are two tools which could help
fill this gap and may be able to work together, in socially assistive
robot-augmented telerehabilitation, to create meaningful telerehab
encounters.
We present results from a survey completed between Jun 31, 2020, and Dec
31, 2020, asking 379 therapists in the United States for their opinions
on features which may be useful for a telerehabilitation platform and
for their general feelings towards robots.
We explore their answers and reduce the response space by identifying
six factors underlying the answers.
We show that therapists want high quality video, control over robots,
and more regulations.
We also find that they are positive about the features which could be
used in socially assistive robot-augmented telerehabilitation.