Design and Development of Intelligent Home Rehab Device for Post Stroke Therapy with Electro-Hydraulic Interventions Rehab Device for Post Stroke Therapy with Electro-Hydraulic Interventions

Abstract

Today, brain attack disorders are one of the most life-threatening areas in the medical era, which mankind is facing nowadays. Globally, more than 10,000,000 people are subjected to brain attack disorders like hemiplegia and tremor, every year, where two-thirds of them survive. Among the survival community, more than 80 per cent of them are subjected to long-term impairment of their upper extremity. In order to treat the impairment, the survival group is subjected to medications and rehabilitation in order to improve their daily living. But the facilities are very limited in fast- developing countries like India when compared to western standards. The rehabilitation given corresponding with medications during the treatment period in hospitals does not give a complete recovery from disability. People from rural background could not meet their rehabilitation requirements even in the hospital during treatment and also when they are discharged to home after treatment from hospitals due to financial constraints and reachability. In order to motivate the survival group to fulfill their daily living and improve their lifestyle, this paper is focused on intelligent home-based rehabilitation system at low cost, reliability, and affordability. One major movement disorder namely Upper Arm Hemiplegia was taken into account and visited few major hospitals around Coimbatore and Chennai for literature and case study. The facilities available in various hospitals and their drawbacks were analyzed. Based on the studies conducted at hospitals and taking advice from therapists, an innovative low-cost home-based rehabilitation device using Electro-Hydraulic systems has been developed to support patients who were used to impaired living even after treatments. To support Upper Arm Hemiplegia patients, the devices which were developed and experimented to hold different functionalities are discussed in this paper.