Unsupervised Therapy After Stroke in the Home Setting with a Hand Rehabilitation Device (ReHandyBot)

During the familiarization phase at the rehabilitation clinic, participants perform one week of supervised and one week of minimally-supervised therapy with the ReHandyBot under the supervision of a supervisor (i.e., therapist or researcher). Minimally-supervised therapy means that participants try to perform therapy with the device by themselves, while the supervisor is still present but helps only in case participants encounter problems or if they have any questions. During the supervised and minimally-supervised phases (first 2 weeks), the intervention dose is 5 sessions of approximately 45 minutes per week. These sessions are performed in addition to the conventional therapy plan. During each session, the robot proposes a set of 3 exercises, each lasting between 10 and 15 minutes.

"After the familiarization phase, participants train without supervision at the clinic until discharge and then at home for six weeks.~If the therapist thinks that the participant have properly learnt how to use the device and can train with it safely, the participant can keep training with the device unsupervised (both at the clinic and at home).~If participants are not ready for unsupervised therapy with the device, they receive a booklet of exercises to perform without supervision (both at the clinic and at home). These exercises do not imply the use of the robot but are exercises discussed with the therapists and meaningful for the specific patient."