AI-based body pose detection to extend telehealth software
Tags: ai, datascience, computerscience, algorithms
Published: 2024-06-13 14:58:05

_This post is a quick overview of an Abto Software [blog article](https://www.abtosoftware.com/blog/ai-based-body-pose-detection-to-extend-telehealth-software)._

Telehealth adoption, being influenced by the coronavirus pandemic, drastically changed healthcare delivery. Administrational processes, including registration and scheduling, patient management, financial operations – telehealth utilization has brought feasible benefits across departments.

But nonetheless, it’s the synergy between telehealth applications and modern-day computational technology that transforms healthcare accessibility and quality.

In the following overview, we’ll discuss how innovation might benefit telehealth services.

## Telehealth services market dynamics

As stated by ASPE, telehealth usage has stayed above 20% after the COVID-19 crisis for all population groups.

In the United States, telehealth adoption has grown in only the first three months of the coronavirus outburst. Quite predictably, telehealth utilization has lowered during the forecast period in 2021-2022, but, however, remained about pre-coronavirus levels.

## Telehealth dive-in – terms explained

Telehealth services are modern information and communication technologies being implemented to enable healthcare delivery without requiring in-person appointments.

Telehealth-related functions go beyond traditional services, thus benefiting healthcare providers and patients. Telehealth-focused objectives might encompass clinical operation, patient monitoring and management, healthcare education and promotion, and more.

## Building reliable healthcare applications

Abto Software, by applying domain knowledge and experience, can design highly robust healthcare solutions. Preliminary research, requirement gathering and documentation, planning, engineering, as well as deployment – our engineers can cover every stage.

Since 2007, our company has been actively delivering custom-designed solutions, no matter the complexity. Our engineers can handle virtual appointments, remote monitoring, virtual training, examination, rounding, and other essential features.

## Applying modern-day data science

Telehealth and telemedicine software can provide future-proof capabilities for strategic healthcare providers. Increased accessibility, reduced time and cost, employee satisfaction, patient motivation and adherence – remote delivery can change the entire healthcare scene.

But nonetheless, telemedicine systems typically foresee manual processing, which quickly becomes inefficient. That means deteriorated accessibility, resource-allocation challenges, and other common problems.

By delaying digital transformation, healthcare leaders are facing inefficient processes associated with:

- Data management 
- Document management 
- Data insights 
- Regulatory compliance 

But leveraging advanced technology, healthcare providers might harness greater efficiency across operations:

- Virtual consultations and follow-ups
- Appointment scheduling and reminders 
- Data access and management 
- Data analytics and reporting 

We at Abto Software are excited about exploring cutting-edge technology, in particular artificial intelligence. Privacy and security concerns, regulatory and licensing challenges, compatibility issues, security vulnerabilities – our engineers know everything about delivering robust products without endangering existing processes.

In fact, our engineers have the required expertise to apply artificial intelligence to extend healthcare solutions.

## Physical therapy: the traditional manual approach

The gold-standard manual approach applied towards physical rehabilitation focuses around human interaction. The problems it presents might include subjective evaluation, disparate protocols, and many other limitations.

Within those manual methods, physical therapists guide patients through exercises to restore desired mobility. But, usually, excessive equipment, paper-based instructions, and resource-intensive, in-person appointments are burdening both parties.

In general, healthcare providers are facing the following operational challenges:

### Subjective assessment

Clinical assessment is prone to inconsistency, deteriorated efficiency, and undesired healthcare outcomes, which causes reputational and financial losses.

### Standardization challenges

Non-standardized approaches are vulnerable to misdiagnosis, decreased reliability, regulatory consequences, and overall business damage.

### Limited scalability

Traditional programs and resource-intensive, which deteriorates healthcare accessibility and productivity. Restrained scalability typically means longer waiting, decreased performance, employee overload and burnout, and worse patient outcomes.

### Human error

Conventional programs are associated with fatigue, distraction, misunderstanding, and other human factors. These provoke increased time and cost, decreased efficiency, inaccurate diagnoses, inconsistent treatment, and other unpleasant consequences. 

## Physical therapy: why introduce artificial intelligence

Pose detection is a break-through technology, which leverages artificial intelligence and its various techniques. By combining advanced algorithms to recognize joint positions (head, shoulders, elbows, hands, knees, feet), the technology can overcome most challenges of traditional physiotherapy assessment. 

Pose estimation can be quickly integrated to provide accurate assessment, personalized programs, and more. The technology can benefit those patients pursuing rehabilitation and patients that have chronic conditions, elderly people, disabled people, and others.

By integrating the technology, healthcare companies might leverage:

- Objective assessment of movement, alignment, posture, and more
- Standardized protocols for uniformity across practices, thus enabling more predictable & comparable patient outcomes across settings 
- Healthcare accessibility for individuals who experience transportation difficulties
- Data-driven decision-making by collecting and analyzing patient-related information

## Summing up

Artificial intelligence can be successfully implemented to extend telehealth and telemedicine applications, particularly benefiting physical therapy and rehabilitation.

So, why delay modernization?

Our expertise:

- Artificial intelligence
- Computer vision

Our projects:

- AI enabled motion analysis for remote physical therapy and rehabilitation
- CV enabled jump recognition and analysis to improve public health
- CV supported self-diagnosis application 
- CV powered blood recognition and analysis
- Computer vision to drive medical imaging
- Computer vision to empower fall detection for video analytics platform