Clinical Study of a Wearable Remote Rehabilitation Training System for Patients With Stroke: Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial

Background In contrast to the large and increasing number of patients with stroke, clinical rehabilitation resources cannot meet their rehabilitation needs. Especially for those discharged, ways to carry out effective rehabilitation training without the supervision of physicians and receive guidance from physicians remain urgent problems to be solved in clinical rehabilitation and have become a research hot spot at home and abroad. At present, there are many studies on home rehabilitation training based on wearable devices, Kinect, among others, but these have disadvantages (eg, complex systems, high price, and unsatisfactory rehabilitation effects). Objective This study aims to design a remote intelligent rehabilitation training system based on wearable devices and human-computer interaction training tasks, and to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of the remote rehabilitation training system for nonphysician-supervised motor rehabilitation training of patients with stroke through a clinical trial study. Methods A total of 120 inpatients with stroke having limb motor dysfunction were enrolled via a randomized, parallel-controlled method in the rehabilitation institutions, and a 3-week clinical trial was conducted in the rehabilitation hall with 60 patients in the experimental group and 60 in the control group. The patients in the experimental group used the remote rehabilitation training system for rehabilitation training and routine clinical physical therapy (PT) training and received routine drug treatment every day. The patients in the control group received routine clinical occupational therapy (OT) training and routine clinical PT training and routine drug treatment every day. At the beginning of the training (baseline) and after 3 weeks, the Fugl-Meyer Motor Function Rating scale was scored by rehabilitation physicians, and the results were compared and analyzed. Results Statistics were performed using SAS software (version 9.4). The total mean Fugl-Meyer score improved by 11.98 (SD 8.46; 95% CI 9.69-14.27) in the control group and 17.56 (SD 11.65; 95% CI 14.37-20.74) in the experimental group, and the difference between the 2 groups was statistically significant (P=.005). Among them, the mean Fugl-Meyer upper extremity score improved by 7.45 (SD 7.24; 95% CI 5.50-9.41) in the control group and 11.28 (SD 8.59; 95% CI 8.93-13.62) in the experimental group, and the difference between the 2 groups was statistically significant (P=.01). The mean Fugl-Meyer lower extremity score improved by 4.53 (SD 4.42; 95% CI 3.33-5.72) in the control group and 6.28 (SD 5.28; 95% CI 4.84-7.72) in the experimental group, and there was no significant difference between the 2 groups (P=.06). The test results showed that the experimental group was better than the control group, and that the patients’ motor ability was improved. Conclusions The remote rehabilitation training system designed based on wearable devices and human-computer interaction training tasks can replace routine clinical OT training. In the future, through medical device registration certification, the system will be used without the participation of physicians or therapists, such as in rehabilitation training halls, and in remote environments, such as communities and homes. Trial Registration Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR2200061310; https://tinyurl.com/34ka2725