Development of a telerehabilitation system for training physiotherapists in rural areas.

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of transmitting moving pictures via the Internet for processing by a three-dimensional motion analyser. The movements of two patients were filmed by a videocamera and transmitted from a hospital to a university department of physiotherapy. After advanced analysis using a three-dimensional motion analyser, physiotherapists prepared a treatment plan. The transmitted moving pictures were clear enough for analysis. The physiotherapists in the hospital were satisfied with the results of the motion analysis and found the guidance from an expert physiotherapist valuable. In the future, a large number of video-sequences could be transmitted during the night, stored at the university and then analysed later by an expert physiotherapist.