Physical therapy typically requires that a patient undertake a prescribed series of repetitive exercises so as to strengthen or otherwise treat a portion of that patient's body. These prescribed exercises are patientspecific, in the sense that they must take into account the general health of the patient, the specific therapy to be achieved, etc. Since the patient typically performs at least some of the exercises out of view of the therapist, it is common for the therapist to provide the patient with a set of written guidelines to be followed when carrying out the prescribed exercise regimen. Among other things, this set of written guidelines may include paper drawings of the exercises which are to be performed by the patient.
Unfortunately, it can be very difficult for the physical therapist to provide the patient with all of the desired instructions via the aforementioned written guidelines, even where these guidelines include paper drawings.
For one thing, it can be prohibitively time-consuming for the physical therapist to provide each individual patient with their own unique set of written instructions, where those instructions are perfectly tailored to the specific physical therapy regimen to be undertaken by that patient.
For another thing, in many cases it can be very difficult for the therapist to provide the patient with a set of written instructions which will provide all of the desired information to the patient. This may be due to the inherent difficulty of illustrating dynamic actions using static drawings, and/or due to patient miscomprehension of written instructions, etc.
In addition to the foregoing, many patients tend to find their prescribed exercises extremely boring, due to the highly repetitive nature of these exercises. As a result, some patients unilaterally shorten their exercise regimen, or they may even skip it altogether. This can significantly undermine the effectiveness of the physical therapy prescribed for that patient.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds