Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
INTRODUCTION: Facial nerve paralysis is a neurological disorder in which the intentional movements of the patient's facial muscles are completely or partially lost due to involvement of the seventh cranial nerve. Physiotherapy, especially exercise therapy plays an important role in restoring movement to the muscles. Thus, this study aimed to develop and evaluate a tele-exercise mobile application for patients with facial paralysis. METHODS: This study was carried out in four phases including content Preparation, Identification of system requirements, development, and usability evaluation. These phases were conducted according to the principles of the IMS patient education model. The first step was to identify exercises by reviewing relevant scientific sources. In the second step, functional and non-functional requirements of the program were identified through a literature review. Extracted data was validated according to the agreement level of 12 experts by the Delphi method. In the third step, the prototype of the App was designed by Adobe XD software and after approval by the research team, the final App was developed for the Android environment. Finally, the App was evaluated by applying the heuristic principles of usability. RESULTS: In the first step, the required exercises were identified) 28 exercises) that classified into 3 categories and in the second step, the requirements of the application were obtained (34 items) and classified into 6 categories. Then, the design and development of the App was done. This App has admin, physiotherapist, and patient user interfaces. The results of the usability evaluation showed that the App has a desirable level of usability. CONCLUSION: The use of mobile apps in patient rehabilitation and exercise therapy has several advantages, including easy access for patients to exercise programs at any time and place, the ability to share exercise results with a physiotherapist, and reduced costs.
Kouhanjani et al. (Wed,) studied this question.