Telerehabilitation Platforms in Times of COVID-19: Usability Evaluation

The health response to the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted neurorehabilitation provision worldwide. Telerehabilitation (TR) or e-rehabilitation refers to the delivery of rehabilitation via information and communication technologies (ICT) used to directly provide remote physiotherapy activities, including “evaluation, assessment, monitoring, prevention, intervention, supervision, education, consultation, and coaching”. As part of the precautions established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, TR is a procedure that allows continuity of care for patients who can benefit from remote sessions while ensuring greater protection for those who are members of vulnerable groups. In this paper, we propose to apply the Human-Computer Interaction field’s concept of “usability” to the evaluation of three TR platforms, using a usability evaluation process proposed by Rautela A. and a method of inquiry by Lewis, such as the CSUQ (Computer System Usability Questionnaire) applied by IBM, to compare the results with the SUS (Systems Usability Scale) which allows verifying its acceptability ranges by the final users categorized as “acceptable” above 70, “marginal” between 50 and 70 and “unacceptable” below 50. The findings have allowed us to obtain recommendations and identify useful functionalities that could apply in designing and developing a TR platform to treat the SARS-COV-2 virus related complications.