The present invention relates to orthopedic treatment processes and, in particular, the present invention relates to preparing orthopedic treatment protocols used in conjunction with computerized or digitalized orthopedic treatment devices.
Orthopedic treatment historically involved a physician examining and diagnosing an orthopedic injury in a patient, prescribing a treatment protocol of activities or exercises for the patient to follow in order to facilitate healing, and subsequent re-examination to assess patient progress. Additionally, the patient was traditionally guided and assisted in following the prescribed treatment protocol by trained medical professionals, such as physical therapists, who could inform and advise the attending physician concerning patient compliance with the protocol and communicate and assist with the patient to provide desired activity details and elicit patient response. The traditional treatment path often included either hospitalization or patient visits at a physical therapy facility.
In modern times, financial pressure upon the medical arts and the surrounding medical industry has increased the number of patients each physician must treat and reduced the rate of hospitalization and tendency to employ physical therapy facilities, as well as reduced the direct supervision of the patient activities by the physical therapist. Computerized devices have been developed that at least partially substitute for the physical therapist contact, and yet monitor patient activities under a treatment protocol. One particularly innovative device system, the IZEX sensor-instrumented orthosis and associated Smart IDEA(trademark) computer/conununicator, not only replace much of the physical therapist""s function of (1) advising and instructing the patient and (2) advising the attending physician of patient compliance, but also allow an improved measuring and monitoring of patient rehabilitation activities and exercise parameters, such as effort exerted in rehabilitation exercises or stress applied to the orthopedic injury. This improved monitoring enables exploitation of a long observed and literature documented phenomenon of improved recovery in response to appropriately applied exercises to orthopedic injuries. The topic of accelerated and improved recovery through the use of controlled bio-feedback based rehabilitation has been reviewed extensively by one of the present inventors in patents U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,375; U.S. Pat. No. 5,368,546; U.S. Pat. No. 5,484,389; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,975, and the entire disclosures of these patents are incorporated herein by reference.
The ultimate goal of efficiency and optimal and accelerated recovery outcomes still remains elusive, however, since the utilization of the IZEX(trademark) orthosis brace system and Smart IDEA(trademark) computer/communicator continues to rely upon physician examination, diagnosis and prescription of a treatment protocol for the injured patient. The physician may not readily know nor have available information concerning the optimal treatment protocol for an accurately diagnosed injury. It would be a significant advance in orthopedic treatment if a physician or other treatment professional could be rapidly advised concerning optimal treatment information based upon up-to-date experiential outcomes of similar treated injuries. It would also be a significant advance if the physician or treatment professional could leverage their own expertise and their colleagues"" most recent knowledge to appropriately modify and adapt previously successful protocols to fit a new patient. It would also be a significant advance if the protocol could be installed in a handheld computer (monitoring device/computer/communicator) device with ease and efficiency. Additionally, it would be a significant advance to allow modification, particularly real-time modification, of rehabilitation exercise protocols by a user or in response to a user request, with such modification being limited by reasonable constraints. The following invention provides such advances to the orthopedic arts.