Severe acquired brain injury (SABI) is damage to the brain, occurring from traumatic or non-traumatic causes, and resulting in deterioration of physical, cognitive, and emotional functioning. Typically, SABI rehabilitation in medical centres has to face a socio-economic burden and it is limited by high costs and/or geographical barriers.

Tele-rehabilitation has recently emerged as an effective tool for providing assisted living, increasing clinical outcomes, positively enhancing patients’ Quality of Life (QoL) and fostering the reintegration of patients into society, also pushing down clinical costs. Cloud computing in combination with Edge Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the main enablers for telerehabilitation. Edge rehabilitation devices can act as smart digital biomarkers sending quantifiable physiological and behavioural patients’ data to the Hospital Cloud. Furthermore, telerehabilitation allows assessment, intervention, consultation, and education.

However, the market of rehabilitation is currently dominated by expensive vendor lock-in stand-alone robotic rehabilitation devices aimed at clinical centres.

The Tele-rehabilitation as a Service (TRaaS) project aims at overcoming such a gap by creating a reference intelligent Cloud/Edge framework architecture and a standard data model for the development of different kinds of new de-hospitalized telerehabilitation services.
Particular attention will be given to the design, development and testing of the TRaaS framework architecture specifically considering AI and preserving patient privacy. TRaaS will embody the Cloud/Edge continuum principle. On the patient side, the TraaS architecture will include an Edge layer, acting either at the patient’s home or in self-service clinical centres offering robot-assisted rehabilitation devices equipped with sensors and actuators connected with the hospital Cloud. Furthermore, ML techniques will be also studied to perform patients’ clinical data analytics at both Cloud and Edge layers for identifying and/or improving the effectiveness of the patients’ motor, cognitive and/or sensory rehabilitation outcomes. A pilot will be arranged in the IRCCS Centro Neurolesi “Bonino Pulejo”.

Responsible: Ing. Giovanna Sannino

Call: Research Project of Relevant National Interest (Progetto di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale – PRIN) – 202294473C

Application Area: Artificial Intelligence, eHealth, Tele-Rehabilitation

Geographic scope: National

Start date: September 28, 2023

End date: September 27, 2025