Telerehabilitation in Older Thai Community-Dwelling Adults

SIMPLE SUMMARY: In this work, we created a new telecommunication technology for evaluating and giving consultation or treatment from a remote area. By employing wearable sensor technologies on healthy older participants, we hoped to demonstrate the benefits of teleconferencing systems for assessing physical performance, walking ability, and fall risk and offering exercise regimens. The initiative was carried out in four rural areas in Thailand. The group tele-exercise program included 123 participants in total and lasted for 8 weeks. We found that tele-exercise enhances physical performance and lowers the risk of falls in healthy older adults living in a community compared to an initial examination. The participants’ total satisfaction score was remarkable. We hope that these results could lead to building a full component of the telerehabilitation system in Thailand and increase accessibility for patients in rural areas. ABSTRACT: To investigate the impact on physical performance and walking abilities associated with fall risk and disability in the senior population, we created a telerehabilitation system. This is a multi-site, community setting, pre–post experimental study. We recruited participants from four rural areas in Thailand. All participants received eight weeks of tele-exercise, three sessions per week, via the telerehabilitation system. After the intervention, all participants underwent the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, and the six-minute walk test (6MWT) using a wearable sensor system. A total of 123 participants participated in the study and 2 participants dropped out while conducting the study, thus 121 participants were included in the analysis. In comparison to the baseline, we discovered a considerable improvement in the SPPB score (0.65 ± 0.22, p < 0.001), TUG (−1.70 ± 0.86, p < 0.001), and 6MWT (10.23 ± 7.33, p = 0.007). Our study demonstrates the benefits of telerehabilitation on SPPB, TUG, and 6MWT related to disabilities and fall risk. This telerehabilitation technology demonstrated its viability in the community environment and demonstrated its capacity to offer fundamental components of remote rehabilitation services within the healthcare system.