Exploring the emerging concept of precision rehabilitation: a qualitative study

This descriptive qualitative study explored knowledge users' perspectives on precision rehabilitation concepts, barriers, facilitators, and future directions as part of a convergent mixed methods scoping review.

Sixteen clinicians, administrators, and researchers from three North American tertiary care rehabilitation centers were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling to participate in individual semi-structured interviews. Conventional qualitative content analysis followed a deductive thematic approach based on predetermined categories.

Analyses revealed three main themes: (1) Although precision rehabilitation shares foundational concepts with precision medicine, there are certain elements, such as personalization, that are uniquely expressed; (2) Rehabilitation-specific facilitators to precision approaches include the use of unobtrusive technology to collect large amounts of data in real-world contexts, while barriers include rehabilitation's typically small, heterogeneous sample sizes; and (3) The future of precision rehabilitation will require collaborative data-sharing to focus on determining care trajectories that enhance functional outcomes.

Findings provide the first qualitative synthesis of knowledge users perspectives to complement quantitative evidence and inform the emerging field of precision rehabilitation.