Tech donation enables leading centres to offer remote rehab

Three hospitals globally have enabled patients to continue their rehabilitation remotely through the use of groundbreaking rehab technology, which was donated for use by its creators.

The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN) in London, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and Fondazione Don Gnocchi in Milan have all been given use of the Evolv Rehabkit, which allows the prescription of personalised telerehabilitation activities for people to complete remotely.

The initiative was a joint approach from medtech company Evolv, alongside Microsoft and ZOTAC.

The Evolv Rehabkit comprises a virtual therapy software platform called EvolvRehab, and the RehabKit hardware which connects to a television.

The system allows patients to perform exergames – video game-based exercises – which are prescribed by therapists who can remotely monitor patient adherence and performance through the system.

The NHNN is using the RehabKit in its Queen Square Upper Limb Neurorehabilitation Programme.

“We know that rehabilitation is vitally important for upper limb recovery,” says Professor Nick Ward, consultant neurologist who leads the programme.

“Repetitive training is one component, but it is often not motivating.

“We should be striving to create enriched environments for our patients to recover in, and the RehabKits are a great way of contributing to that in their own home.”

The Evolv RehabKit incorporates the Microsoft Azure Kinect DK, which uses computer vision and Artificial Intelligence to track patients’ movements, and a mini-gaming PC from ZOTAC.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is used to securely host and share the experience, while Microsoft Teams allows patients and therapists to communicate quickly and easily.

Through the adoption of the technology, patients have been able to continue rehabilitation they would otherwise have potentially missed out on over the past year, jeopardising their longer-term prospects of recovery.

In New York, the Evolv RehabKits will be rolled out to a network of facilities for older adults, as part of a fall prevention programme supervised by the Abilities Research Center at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Fondazione Don Gnocchi, one of the largest not for profit organisations in the field of rehabilitation in Italy, plans to use their donated RehabKits to provide home care to patients with neurological conditions including stroke and Multiple Sclerosis.

“The pandemic has had a devastating effect across the world on patients receiving specialised rehabilitation, as well as on their families and care givers,” says David Fried, chief executive of Evolv.

“We wanted to help the medical professionals who are working tirelessly to continue treating their patients remotely under incredibly difficult circumstances.

“We are delighted that therapists can use our solution to provide telerehabilitation during this global crisis to support some vulnerable people in society directly in their own homes or out in the community.”

Quentin Miller, principal program manager for the Azure Kinect project at Microsoft, says: “We have an existing relationship with Evolv, so when they asked us if we wished to participate in this project, we didn’t think twice about it.

“Microsoft has been at the forefront of providing transformative solutions in the healthcare field providing remote services to patients during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We hope to help hospitals use our technology along with that of Evolv and ZOTAC to help open the door to telerehabilitation and drive innovation in patient care.”

Tony Wong, chief executive of ZOTAC, adds: “As a technology leader in gaming and computer hardware, we were pleased to utilise our unique line of mini PCs in a collaborative solution to drive this amazing telerehabilitation initiative to help those in need.

“This opportunity to utilise our mini pc and graphics card engineering expertise to work in tandem with Evolv and Microsoft was a natural fit as many of our mini pc solutions power many other technologies behind the scenes and this was another example of that.

“We couldn’t be happier to be a part of this solution as it helps to improve the lives of those directly and indirectly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and we hope this collaborative technology solution will continue to aid healthcare organisations and their patients in many other ways long into the future.”