What makes the difference between a three-week recovery time and a six-week recovery time? Between a highly effective rehab cycle, and a less than optimal one? The answer largely depends on the extent to which physical therapists and patients can collaborate. This is true during injury rehabilitation, advanced athletic training, or stroke recovery.
In each of these therapy scenarios, gait assessment plays a central role in the pace and progress of rehab. Fortunately, there are many tools today that help automate certain aspects of gait assessment and facilitate patient/therapist collaboration. In our last post, we took a closer look at Stride Smart, our integrated gait assessment technology.
Alongside Stride Smart, the AlterG® Video Monitoring System, our video gait analysis, helps therapists correct and coach gait. Here’s how.
What is Video Gait Analysis?
It’s one thing to tell patients what they’re doing wrong and how to correct it. It’s wholly another thing to show them. AlterG® Digital Video Monitoring System, the video gait analysis tool from AlterG, helps clinicians communicate and build a shared understanding of therapeutic goals by showing patients gait asymmetries they may not feel.
This means the ability to, for example, record and play clips of a patient’s gait in stop, normal speed, or slow motion. In doing so, physical therapists can talk patients through on-the-fly corrections to gait and stride, leading to improved motor learning and, ideally, shorter rehab cycles.
Why Digital Video Monitoring is Different
In physical therapy environments, recommendations and results backed by tangible, quantifiable data are always at a premium. These are the data points that enable therapists to optimize therapy regimens, make clinical recommendations, and run a more efficient business. Here’s how AlterG® video gait analysis helps them get there:
- Monitoring – Built-in cameras allow therapists to toggle front, side, and rear camera views to help users identify and understand abnormal gait and stride patterns.
- Recording – Capture and replay high-definition clips in up to ten-seconds long.
- Analysis – Therapists can see and correct deficiencies in real time, thus preventing bad habits or future injuries.
- Sharing – Easily email video clips or save them to external drives to share progress with the entire care team.
- Reporting – Email or export video and reports to external drives to share with patients, athletes, physicians, and coaches. A convenient and efficient way to demonstrate progress and help users achieve optimal outcomes.
Better Video Gait Analysis, Optimized Rehab Outcomes
The Digital Video Monitoring System is about empowering both therapist and patient with information. Self-correcting as a patient is easier when you can see what you are doing on the screen in front of you, including the cues you need to follow for better gait. And for therapists, it is far more effective to show patients how to self-correct, rather than try to explain.
The Digital Video Monitoring System is is available as an accessory with the Pro 200 and M/F320. Learn more about adding Digital Video Monitoring System to your clinical environment.