Computer assisted learning in manipulative therapy education

Teaching manipulative therapy is one of the most relevant issues in a physiotherapy course. However, for an effective instruction of this topic practical experience is considered fundamental. To achieve this purpose, this paper presents a computer assisted environment for the practical learning of manipulative therapy. The implementation of such a laboratory includes standard Personal Computers (PCs), the popular software package Matlab, a digital camera and gloves with embedded strength sensors located in the thumb and near the wrist. The students wear a glove that measures the applied force in the patient. These signals are acquired and stored in a computer providing the teachers with the necessary information to analyze the applied force and verify if the manual therapy was successful. A digital camera is also used to record the images of the student's movements during the manual therapy application. The developed system has an autonomy of 15h allowing the application of thirty therapies and the corresponding data analysis.