Physical therapists could make better treatment decisions if they had accurate patient home exercise data but today this information is only available from patient self-report. A more accurate source of data could be gained from wearable computing designed for physical therapy exercise support. Existing systems have been tested in the lab but we have little information about issues they may face in home settings. We designed a technology probe, SenseCap, and deployed it for seven days in ten physical therapy patients' homes. SenseCap is a wearable physical therapy support system that gathers patient exercise compliance and performance data and summarizes the data in charts on an iPad Dashboard for physical therapists to view when patients return to the clinic. In this paper, we present the results of our deployment, show in-home patient exercise data gathered by the probe, and make design recommendations based on patient and physical therapist responses.

We are currently developing an immersive virtual environment display for research into the rehabilitation of balance disorders, called the Balance NAVE (BNAVE). Using this system, the therapist can create varying degrees of sensory conflict and congruence in persons with balance disorders. With the capability of changing visual scenes based on the needs of the therapist, the BNAVE is a promising tool for rehabilitation. The system uses four PC's, three stereoscopic projectors, and three rear-projected screens, which surround the patient's entire horizontal field of view. The BNAVE can accommodate many types of sensors and actuators for a wide range of experiments.