How To Add Your Own Exercises to PT-Helper

At the American Physical Therapy Conference (APTA) Combined Sections Meeting (CSM) in New Orleans in Feb 2018, we received very positive responses to the PT-Helper mobile app for patients as well as our online exercise prescription service, CONNECT, for therapists.

One of the common questions we received was, “Can therapists create their own exercises?”

The answer is YES!

Creating Exercises on CONNECT

Therapists can create their own unique exercises on CONNECT that they can prescribe to their patients. These exercises will be private to the therapist’s account and will not be shared with other CONNECT subscribers.

To create and manage your private exercises in CONNECT, select (1) Settings on the pull-down menu at the top right of the screen, select (2) My Exercises, and then select (3) Add Exercise.

 

This will bring up the Add Exercise form to enter the exercise name, description, default exercise parameters, and exercise images.

Many of the PT-Helper exercises use three pictures to define an exercise: Start/Rest position, Concentric motion (or Hold position for stretches), Eccentric motion (or Recovery position for stretches). Quite frequently, the Start/Rest position will be the same as the Recovery position. We also have the ability to add Support images for more detailed motions or to improve understanding of the exercise sequence.

An example of an exercise created by a therapist on CONNECT is the Golf Reach Thru exercise by BreakOut Advisors and Rehabilitation with the images shown below. A little digital processing by PT-Helper was done to remove the background and to add some arrows resulting in a very clean sequence of pictures that their patients/clients can easily follow.

Creating Exercise on the Mobile App

In addition to creating exercises on CONNECT, it is possible to create exercises locally on the patient’s smartphone using the PT-Helper mobile app. This may be useful for individualized exercises that will not be prescribed to different patients or in the home health space where the therapist needs to create an exercise based upon the restrictions found in the home.

To create an exercise on the mobile app, select Exercises By Category from the app’s home page and then select Create An Exercise. This will bring up a form where you can specify the name, category, description, and exercise parameters.

Adding Video or Photos to the Mobile App

Once any exercise is added to Favorites or is part of a prescribed Home Exercise Program (HEP), you can use the camera symbol 

located at the top left of the screen to take pictures or videos. You can take videos of your patient doing their exercises while giving verbal cues on how to do it properly. Since these pictures or videos are not exported by PT-Helper, they will remain private on the patient’s phone.

Watch the short how-to video below to learn how to add pictures or video to the PT-Helper mobile app.

Start your Free 30-day Trial of the PT-Helper CONNECT tool for physical therapists and other therapy providers, so you too may create and prescribe HEPs that can easily be synchronized with the PT-Helper mobile app.