Welcome to the RERC-AMI's home page for the UniTherapy software service. Roughly 50% of the support for developing UniTherapy is provided by the RERC-AMI.

UniTherapy is a telerehabilitation platform which builds on other efforts at web-based therapy and targets software support for Computer-Assisted Motivating Rehabilitation (CAMR) protocol.This technology supports many computer input devices such as force-reflecting joysticks, IP telecommunication between a “consumer/patient interface” (PI) and “telepractitioner interface” (TI) for simple interactive two-way interfaces and videoconferencing, and support for multiple communication modes. Using the .Net framework and DirectX capability of Windows, it supports telecommunication between joysticks, force-reflecting joysticks, Joymouse (joystick functioning as a mouse), wireless mouse, wireless PDA touchscreens, and simple voice commands. It includes a rich menu of assessment capabilities, and is being used for a number of research projects (see also Project 3.1). It is designed to support both home-based assessment and therapy and neurorehabilitation research protocols.

Recent attention has focused on turning UniTherapy into a service (see also Project D3.2). A key motivation has been to systematically develop a platform that is as universally accessible and flexible as possible. This enhanced access can benefit a greater diversity of clients and open up new possibilities for discovering and implementing optimized intervention strategies across the continuum of care. Advantages to exposing the functionalities of UniTherapy as a service rather than as a standalone application include:

1. A service is platform independent and can be called from any other user/service via standard communication protocol (e.g. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)).
2. A service is highly reusable in that other research/clinic groups can build their own rehabilitation program based on the existing functionalities of UniTherapy.
3. By choosing to only loosely couple a service with its user interface, emerging approaches become available for building up an accessible customized user interface for a new client.
4. Local services can be turned into a web service with less effort, including describing services as WSDL (Web Service Description Language) documents, which will facilitate access to UniTherapy platform and open the functionalities to authenticated user/service on the web.

A number of conference proceedings are available that summarize UniTherapy (BMES in Nashville, October 2003, and in Chicago, 2006; RESNA in Orlando, June 2004, and in Atlanta in 2006, IEEE-EMBS in San Francisco in September 2004), two 4-page papers for the 9th International Congress for Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR) in Chicago in late June 2005. UniTherapy was also exhibited at a booth at ICORR. UniTherapy is also featured within Chapter 27 (Feng and Winters) on personalized home rehab techologies in the book from CRC Press entitled Medical Instrumentation: Accessibility and Usability Considertations.