A Cross-cultural Comparison of Design Feature Preferences Required for a Stroke Tele-rehabilitation System

Conventional stroke rehabilitation methods place a significant burden on physical therapists and clinics in sub-Saharan Africa who struggle with a shortage of rehabilitation professionals and technical resources crucial to the delivery of stroke management. In this study we identified U.S. and Ethiopian-based rehabilitation clinician’s preferences for design features to be included in a community-based mHealth application delivering personalized stroke rehabilitation for patients with upper limb motor dysfunction. Results indicated that both groups felt that the mHealth app should include education, assessment, performance tracking, and multilingual features. However, only Ethiopian clinicians felt that social support, gamification, and patient-clinician communication were critical design features. In sum, our results indicate that Information and Community Technologies (ICT) have the potential to enhance stroke rehabilitation, but must be tailored to the geographical and cultural context of the end-users.