UniTherapy Home Page:

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 D3.1). 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:

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)).
A service is highly reusable in that other research/clinic groups can build their own rehabilitation program based on the existing functionalities of UniTherapy.
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.
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.

Selected Publications

Feng X, Winters JM. "An Interactive Framework for Personalized Computer Assisted Neurorehabilitatioin", In press,IEEE Trans. Inf. Tech. in Biomedicine. [pdf]
Johnson MJ*, Feng X*, Johnson LM, Winters JM. "Potential of a Suite of Robot/Computer-Assisted Motivating Systems for Personalized, Home-Based, Stroke Rehabilitation", in press, J. Neuroengineering Rehabil. (* contributed equally) [pdf]
Feng X, Winters JM. "Emerging Personalized Home Rehabilitation: Integrating Service with Interface", Chapter 27, in Accessibility and Usability for medical Instrumentation (Winters JM and Story MF, eds), CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, Oct. 2006. [pdf]
Feng X, Winters JM. "Quantification of Upper-limb Target Acquisition within Various Impedance Fields Using Force Reflecting Joysticks", 3p, Rehab. Eng. Society of North America (RESNA), Atlanta, 2006. [pdf]
Feng X, Winters JM. "Progress towards a Service-oriented Universal Access Telerehabilitation Platform", 4p, Int. Congr. Rehab Robotics (ICORR),Chicago, 2005. [pdf]
Feng X, Ellsworth C, Johnson LM, Winters JM. "UniTherapy: Software Design and Hardware Tool of Teletherapy", 4p, Rehab. Eng. Society of North America (RESNA), Orlando, 2004. [pdf]