Digital physical therapy company OneStep is teaming up with virtual reality/smart surgery provider Kinomatic to enhance physical therapy for surgery patients.
The OneStep physical therapy app, which harnesses motion sensor technology to customize recovery programs for patients with knee and hip injuries, will now be available for all patients using Kinomatic’s VR solution for joint replacement surgery
Kinomatic patients will have access to a dedicated physical therapist online and will receive individualized “…regimens, and objective, quantifiable, 24/7 feedback through OneStep’s app.”
A major feature of the app is gait analysis. Tomer Shussman, CEO & Co-Founder of OneStep told Orthopedics This Week, “Gait analysis is a key tool in physical therapy used to provide an accurate view of patients’ musculoskeletal systems in relation to walking, strenuous activity, and daily motor tasks. Overall, 70% of physical therapy rehabilitation targets the lower half of the body, so understanding the ins and outs of a patient’s gait is perhaps one of the most important things one can ascertain when formalizing a recovery plan.”
He added, “By harnessing the accelerometers and gyro sensors that exist in our smartphones—which can analyze the phone’s movement in space—OneStep’s technology monitors multiple parameters that provide insight into a patient’s gait. These parameters include the number of steps per minute, stride length, stride symmetry, double support factor, and consistency score, among others. The app constantly monitors both conscious and unconscious walking patterns.”
“Patients can simply place their phone in their pocket, and once they provide consent—the app can run in the background and analyze how they walk when they are not consciously focusing on their steps. This, in turn, offers a wealth of information for physical therapy professionals, as it tracks activity in a person’s natural environment and allows for better clinical decision-making regarding recovery programs. OneStep offers both patients and health professionals ongoing feedback and clinically-relevant insights into patients’ everyday motion. For example, the app measures their motor abilities when they wake up in the morning compared to later in the day, the difference of walking patterns when outdoors versus indoors, etc.”
“OneStep follows the same process for pre-op and post-op recovery, in which we tailor the recovery program to the patient, regardless of where they are in their recovery journey. Patients download the OneStep app and go through a short and simple onboarding process consisting of a questionnaire and an initial gait evaluation, which gives them and the physical therapist a complete assessment of their walking patterns.”
“Subsequently, each patient schedules a time with their personal OneStep physical therapist who will get to know them, understand their needs, review their walking pattern, and together, set recovery goals. Based on the collective information, the physical therapist builds a personalized plan, broken down into short daily exercise routines, all designed to get the patient where they want to go, both before and after surgery,” he said.
OneStep also offers physical therapists and surgeons the visibility they need via OneStep’s Clinic—where they can get access to patients’ progress reports and other clinical insights, allowing them to make better clinical decisions about their patients’ recovery programs, see better results, and ultimately provide better care.
“Thanks to the visibility that OneStep’s app offers to clinicians, physical therapists can now continuously adapt the patient’s recovery plan in real-time based on the progress measured on their smartphones and send actionable feedback and inspirational insights as they go, ensuring patients are recovering as effectively as possible. With OneStep, recovery doesn’t just happen at a clinic—it’s taking place 24/7, from the morning walk down the stairs and then around the block, to the walk back up the steps to the bed, and any daily exercises and practices in between,” Shussman added.
