# A Case Study on the Design and Implementation of a Platform for Hand Rehabilitation
## 4 Method: A Design of an Extensive Rehabilitation Platform  
During RehabHand implementation, we came up with many ideas about what a modern rehabilitation aid should contain. The top-level of the propaedeutic rehabilitation platform is presented in Figure 2. We envision five types of stakeholders in an extensive rehabilitation platform--therapists, patients, communication engineers, rehabilitation aid engineers, and the community. The architecture consists of 3 layers--a software layer, a communication layer, and a hardware layer. In the software layer, therapists are responsible for the definition of new exercises. They also define the treatment plan, which basically means selecting and customizing already defined exercises for a specific patient. If the rehabilitation aid can return feedback from treatment [31], a post-treatment analysis [32] should be supported in the software layer. As shown further in the paper, remote-control [33] is another service that we envision with high priority in future rehabilitation aids. The software layer should be independent--meaning, no matter which rehabilitation device the patient is using, the definition of an exercise should not change. The software layer of an extensive rehabilitation tool should also provide support for patients. Due to different patients' needs, software support can be of various forms and  
Figure 2: Extensive rehabilitation platform. solutions. Note that a combination of solutions can also help some rehabilitation cases (robot-assisted technology together with guidance over speech [34]). The communication layer assists as a glue between the software and hardware layer. It serves as an interface between rehabilitation knowledge (defined within exercises and treatments) and all supported devices. Each exercise needs to be translated into computer instructions for every supported device. The communication layer is the communication engineer's responsibility. In the case of our platform, we name this person RehabHand engineer. This is discussed in further Section 5.2. In the hardware layer, we envision professional rehabilitation devices, local production devices, and other devices. Professional rehabilitation devices that are special-purpose devices and are bought on the market. These devices can come with dedicated software, but to be included in the platform, they need to come at least with an Application Programming Interface (API) that we can use to connect with the software layer. In the hardware layer, an extensive rehabilitation platform should support rehabilitation devices constructed from accessible hardware with local production and other devices, which we can use as a rehabilitation aid--simulations in the form of Virtual Reality [6] and devices like Kinect [35] have already proven their usefulness for the rehabilitation process. Mobile phones, bands, health and fitness gadgets, have many sensors that can be useful during rehabilitation, and are accessible over the Internet for monitoring patients' data. Anyone constructing a modern rehabilitation aid should think which of these devices should be supported in their forthcoming product. Soon, we believe local production will be an important part of modern rehabilitation aids. Combining additive manufacturing with affordable electronics, we can construct customized rehabilitation aids. We name this engineer a Rehabilitation Aid Engineer, a person who constructs the rehabilitation aid. In the field of Digital Fabrication [36], these engineers call themselves _Makers_--anyone producing needed objects. Awareness of the importance of health rises. A new role of the patient, medical staff, the patient's family, or anyone who can become an active participant in creating customized rehabilitation aids. There are already strong communities in rehabilitation (sharing designs of assistive technologies, robot-assisted tools, etc.). In the future, we envision other active participants of the community who share exercises and treatments between users in a unified form, independent of a device.