Under the influence of the epidemic, telemedicine seems to have become mainstream.
In the face of the new coronavirus pandemic, people ’s concerns about health and safety have transformed many clinics from traditional operations to remote Medical provider. After years of hard work, telemedicine has finally become mainstream. Some telemedicine solutions with innovative technologies are beginning to enter everyone’s field of vision, ready to help clinicians and patients to overcome the current difficulties.
Israel recently learned WizeCare is one of them. It mainly focuses on providing intelligent physical therapy and remote rehabilitation support for patients at home, and ensuring measurable, affordable and standardized quality of care.
The predecessor of WizeCare was established in 2011. At that time, it was only a physiotherapy clinic in Tel Aviv, with basic computing equipment. The patient can choose to perform rehabilitation training through personalized video under the supervision of a physiotherapist instead of at home.
After receiving consultations from people from different regions, WizeCare began to transform by early 2016, that is, to develop a This service connects physical therapists and patients worldwide.
Source: WizeCare official website
Now, WizeCare provides an application for medical service providers that allows physiotherapists and clinicians to guide patients for home rehabilitation training. WizeCare will create personalized instructional videos based on the physical therapist’s specifications or the organization’s standards of care. Healthcare professionals can also choose from existing video libraries. Next, patients receive an invitation to a customized plan created by their healthcare provider, who can track their compliance and training outcomes and adjust the plan accordingly.
It is reported that the platform has done a number of clinical tests, covering the famous American medical institutions The Cleveland Clinic and Israel ’s largest medical Meuhedet, one of the health care groups. Test results show that if you insist on using WizeCare’s technology for rehabilitation training at home, the compliance reaches 80% -90% (the average compliance rate at home is only 5% -10%).
As of now, WizeCare has reached more than 1,000 physical therapists and 15,000 patients, concentrated in Israel. Now, WizeCare is also developing a next-generation application that will use a smartphone or tablet camera to track patients and provide guidance and feedback as they exercise.
According to the company ’s founder Roy Shteren, medical service providers have mainly tried two methods to achieve the same effect: One is a motion-sensitive input device like Microsoft Kinect, and the second is a wearable sensor. However, due to cost, manpower constraints, and required technology is too difficult for the target customers, these two methods have not been widely adopted.
Image source: WizeCare official website < br>
In March 2019, WizeCare proposed a new frontier technology MoveAI ™ , which analyzes the patient ’s movements through the mobile device camera and deep learning algorithm. This innovative technology can provide advanced features like Kinect without using Kinect or any wearable devices, allowing patients to obtain real-time performance scores and personalized guidance using only mobile devices to improve their movements.
To allow patients to better understand their care plan and communicate with clinicians at home. WizeCare added another augmented reality function in April 2019-called “MIRROR”, which is a new function of home physical care.
In “MIRROR”, patients can exercise through interactive experiences, through instructional videos, and watch their actual operations. In addition, WizeCare also launched another version called the TV App for the Android TV chassis, which can run on any TV in the patient’s home or in any clinic.
Under the influence of the epidemic, the telemedicine format similar to WizeCare has also ushered in new benefits. Just late last month, UnitedHealthcare, a managed healthcare company in the United States, announced that it will compensate telemedicine services for physical, occupational, and speech therapy provided by qualified healthcare professionals using interactive audio / video technology.
In essence, we can also regard it as a watershed in medical technology, that is, leading medical insurance companies will also cover the care and physical therapy provided by telemedicine and occupation Online access to therapy and speech therapy.