The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on telerehabilitation: mission and approaches

The mission of the new RERC on telerehabilitation is to improve access to care and services for persons with disabilities, through strategic research and development (R&D) activities and comprehensive evaluation capabilities. This paper focuses on the engineering aspects of our approaches toward meeting this aim, and in particular on the various human-technology systems models that are under evaluation for enabling effective telerehabilitation solutions. Four models have been found to capture the various approaches toward telerehabilitation solutions: community telemedicine; telehomecare; telemonitoring; teletherapy