[Nhan Dan Newspaper] Extending the treatment journey with Vietnamese technology

From the challenge of maintaining rehabilitation after patients return home, a team of Vietnamese physicians, experts, and engineers has developed a digital solution to connect patients with medical staff, bringing treatment prescriptions from the hospital into each daily exercise session.

The RehaTex application is proving effective in tele-rehabilitation.

From the post-hospital healthcare gap

For many patients, surgery ends, but the treatment journey continues for weeks, or even months.

Suffering from years of pain and hand numbness, Ms. Than Thi Tuyen, 47, from Bac Giang, had received painkiller injections and plasma transfusions, but her symptoms did not subside. As her condition worsened, she consulted Master, Doctor Do Vu Anh at Viet Duc Friendship Hospital and was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. After surgery, instead of frequently returning to the hospital, she was instructed to continue rehabilitation at home via a smartphone app. "The movements are detailed and easy to understand, so I can practice by myself every day. My hand has also recovered quite quickly," Ms. Tuyen shared.

Cases like Ms. Tuyen demonstrate that the medical gap after surgery has been completed means the treatment journey has not truly ended. For patients living far away, if they must return to a higher-level hospital every time they need guidance or exercise adjustments, prolonged rehabilitation can become a burden in terms of time and travel.

That gap is even more pronounced amidst the increasing demand for rehabilitation driven by an aging population, non-communicable diseases, strokes, trauma, and chronic illnesses. As one of the physicians introducing the tele-rehabilitation platform to monitor post-surgical patients, Dr. Do Vu Anh believes that the issue is not simply providing patients with a few videos to exercise on their own. In many orthopedic trauma cases, the physician must participate in designing the rehabilitation program, because the surgeon directly performing the operation best understands the bone condition, the stability of the structures after intervention, and the safe range of motion for each individual patient.

"Instead of just telling patients to go home and exercise, the program must be specifically prescribed, and capable of being monitored and adjusted by stage," Dr. Vu Anh analyzed. When the prescription is specified on a digital platform, rehabilitation doctors and technicians also have a basis to determine the appropriate exercise intensity, reducing inconsistencies between different links in the treatment chain.

When physicians engage in technology

The idea for a tele-rehabilitation platform was conceived by Assoc. Prof., Dr. Chu Thi Quynh Tho from Hanoi Medical University during her studies and research in Japan. Witnessing the tele-rehabilitation model being applied in many countries, she thought of Vietnam's challenge where specialized human resources are limited and access to services varies unevenly across regions.

"If we don't start, we will never reach the finish line," Dr. Tho recalled. From the problems encountered in clinical practice, she collaborated with Vietnamese doctors and technology experts to develop RehaTex, aiming to bridge in-hospital treatment with home-based rehabilitation. From the beginning, professional requirements took precedence over technological application capabilities. The team once experimented with artificial intelligence to generate instructional videos but realized that some movements lacked precision. Ultimately, nearly 2,000 videos were produced with real people, and the movements were reviewed and standardized by experts. The database was expanded to include speech therapy and groups of conditions in orthopedic trauma, neurology, spinal cord injury, and sports medicine. Consequently, physicians can select exercises and design programs tailored to each patient and recovery stage. Technology continues to support the quantification of joint range of motion, helping to assess progress rather than relying solely on subjective sensation.

The Ministry of Health has identified rehabilitation as a vital link in the continuum of care, ranging from acute treatment to health care and community reintegration. While the professional network still needs further consolidation, technology opens up the possibility of extending medical staff support beyond hospital walls. Stemming from a clinical practice challenge, the Make in Viet Nam solution demonstrates that technology can amplify professional capacity and expand patient access to services. For this direction to maximize its value, initiatives must be validated, standardized, and gradually integrated into the health system, ensuring that the recovery process is not interrupted when patients return home.

"The value of technology does not lie in replacing doctors or technicians. When the rehabilitation process is quantified by data, medical personnel can concentrate their resources on abnormal cases while more accurately evaluating treatment efficacy at each stage. This is also the foundation for rehabilitation to transition from sporadic instructions into a continuous care process, which can be monitored and adjusted for each individual patient" - stated Dr. Do Vu Anh, Orthopedic Trauma and Sports Medicine Surgeon.

Article source:

https://nhandan.vn/khong-cho-cu-nhan-doanh-nghiep-buoc-thang-len-giang-duong-post981607.html