Clemson Therapy and Rehab Physical Therapy App
Team Members: Everett Williams, James Burton
Project Title: Clemson Therapy and Rehab Physical Therapy App
Target Audience:
The target audience is physical therapy patients and caregivers. Also,
practitioners (therapists and physicians) will need a way of interacting with the
patent through the app.
Description:
This app is intended to help physical therapists and their patients. Patients will
use the app to view instructional videos on how to correctly perform the
rehabilitation exercises and to record themselves doing the exercises. This app
will allow patients to either record themselves via the front-facing camera or have
a caregiver record them through the rear-facing camera. Practitioners will be able
to create individual training plans for each patient via an online interface.
Practitioners will be able to review the recorded exercises and provide feedback.
Benefits:
The purpose of this app is to make therapy more convenient, accessible and
effective. Patients sometimes lose paper handouts given to them by practitioners.
They may be unaware how to properly do exercises, reducing the effectiveness
of the therapy. Caregivers may not understand the exercise protocols.
Practitioners are rarely able to give feedback on proper form except for during
appointments. This project aspires to bring therapy instruction, exercise, and
feedback from practitioners into a single convenient application, improving
communication between practitioners and caregivers and patients and
compliance by patients. The will result in more satisfactory physical therapy
outcomes and lower health care costs.
Hardware Requirements:
This app is for smartphones and tablets. The device must be running Android 4.0
(Ice Cream Sandwich) or later. A camera will be required to use this app. A front
facing camera is required for self-recorded videos. A tablet is strongly
recommended for self-recorded videos, but they will work on smartphones. User
recordings will be stored on external SD Card storage.
Description:
Deliverables: <<< Very good list of deliverables.
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External database scripts
o MySQL schema
o PHP/web scripts
Sample exercise videos
Web interface for practitioners
o Main page
o Profile page
o Exercise upload
o Client page
o Exercise plan page
User manual
Technical manual
One minute video preview
App
o External database access (login, etc)
o Database viewing/modification
 View exercise plan
 View practitioner information
 View and edit exercise logs.
o Video recording functionality
o Video playback functionality
 Recorded user videos
 Sample exercise videos
o Exercise log “sharing” feature
o Internal database scripts
 Internal/external database synchronization
 CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations
Description:
An administrator will be able to add practitioner accounts to the system. This will
be done through MySQL.
A physical therapy practitioner will log into the system via the web interface.
From the web interface, there will be a page that allows them to edit their profile.
The practitioner profile will contain contact information as well as additional
practice and/or biographical information. The web interface will create, read, and
update the profile records in the database. The purpose of the practitioner profile
is to enable patients to access it through the app and be able to quickly contact
the practitioner for assistance, if necessary.
The practitioner will also be able to add various exercise videos to the system.
There will be an upload tool on the website to upload the videos. The practitioner
will also be able to generate exercise videos using the app and upload the video
to the webserver. The practitioner can add comments to the videos at selected
time marks using either the web tool or the app. When previewing the videos, the
patient can pause at the time marks and review the practitioner’s comments.
Similarly, the patient can annotate his video clips for review by the practitioner.
The videos will be stored as files on the webserver. The website will store the
location of the videos as well as any additional comments in the external
database.
After completing their profile and adding exercises, the practitioner will be able to
add a new patient to the system. While the system will support adding additional
patient information, adding a new patient will require no more than a username
and password. This way, no personally identifiable health information will need to
be stored in the system, making HIPAA compliance easier.
After adding a new patient, the practitioner will be able to go to another web page
to create an exercise plan for the patient. The exercise plan will consist of various
exercises to be performed in a certain sequence. The practitioner will also be
able to add instructions such as number of repetitions (e.g. do 10 repetitions) or
time (e.g. hold position for 30 seconds) as well as additional notes. This will be
stored in the external database.
The patient will be given a login username and id to log into the system. Upon
opening the app for the first time, they will be asked for their login information
(username/password). The login information will be stored in the preferences. A
user can later change login information by going to the preferences screen.
The app will then connect to the external database (via php scripts) and
download the patient’s profile information, the profile information of all
practitioners associated with the patient, the patients exercise plan, and the
location of the instructional videos along with the practitioner notes, and store
them in the internal database.
The home screen will have three buttons: Exercise plan, Exercise log, and
Practitioner information.
The Exercise Plan screen view will be a dynamically built table view. This view
will show all active tasks in their exercise plan as well as the practitioner notes
about each exercise. Additionally each row will have a button that will launch a
sample video of the exercise and another button that will begin recording the
exercise.
The video playing button will launch a screen that launches a video player. The
player will download the video from the webserver from the location that is stored
in the database. Upon closing the video or returning, the patient will return to the
Exercise Plan screen.
The recording button will launch another screen that will a video recording
session. Users will have the option of being recorded by a caregiver or other third
party via the rear camera or self-recording via the front camera. All videos will be
saved to app-specific external storage. At the end of the recording session, a
new exercise log record will be recorded in the internal database with the id of
the exercise performed, the path of the video file, and a timestamp and the user
will be taken to the exercise log screen.
The Exercise Log screen will be a dynamically generated table view of the
exercise log table. They will be able to launch recorded videos and add additional
notes. Patients will be able to share their exercise log and video with a
practitioner from this screen. They will be able to delete exercises. If an exercise
is deleted, the video file will be deleted as well.
The sharing functionality will allow users to share a video of their exercise log on
dropbox or similar sharing service. Alternatively, it can upload the video to a site
on the web server. It will also allow users to email their practitioners the
applicable link.
Practitioners will be able to review user videos and provide feedback via the web
interface. Practitioners will be able to update exercise plans by adding and
deleting records. To maintain record integrity, old exercise plan records will not
actually be deleted from the external database, but will be marked as “inactive”.
Schedule:
24 March: Database tables finalized. (James) Android screens designed w/basic
flow (click between screens) and menus. (Everett) User Manual (incr) (Everett),
Technical Reference Manual (incr) (James)
31 March: Database access PHP scripts written (Everett) Video download and
playback. (James) Video recording (James). User Manual (incr) (Everett),
Technical Reference Manual (incr) (James)
7 April: Database/Android interaction (backend) designed (James) Preferences
and practitioner view screen. (Everett) User Manual (incr) (Everett), Technical
Reference Manual (incr) (James)
14 April: Dynamic table screens functional (James) Practitioner Web interface
designed (Everett). User Manual (incr) (Everett), Technical Reference Manual
(incr) (James)
21 April: Practitioner Web interface interacting with database (Everett). Video log
sharing/video upload (James). User Manual (completed) (Everett), Technical
Reference Manual (completed) (James)
User interface:
Database Tables:
External DB:
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System_user: Name of user in the system. Can be practitioner or patient.
patient: Table of patients
practitioner: Table of practitioners
practitioner_has_patients: List of practitioner/patient relationships
exercise: Table of exercises with video location and instructions
exercise_plan: Plan for patient created by practioner with exercises
Internal DB:
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android_user: Contains system_userid and patient_id and login
information.
exercise_log: A log of the user doing an exercise_plan item. Contains
exercise_plan_id, video location, user notes, and timestamp.
External practitioner, exercise, and exercise_plan tables will be viewable
from the Android interface.