The iPad becomes your personal physical therapist. Sort of.
Web MD is not a doctor. Most people know this. Some still go to it for a preliminary diagnosis, but most walk away with a sense that they either have a mild sinus headache or a brain tumor. It’s imperfect, but never claims to be anything but. And in many ways that’s what is nice about the Motion Doctor iPad app. It’s not a physical therapist, but it does offer a lot of insight and information. Full disclosure: I’ve got a lot of experience with physical therapists. My mother is one, and I’ve had to go through my share of rehab. I love my mom. I did not enjoy physical therapy.
My therapist was good at articulating what he wanted me to do, or at telling me why I was doing whatever he was asking me to do. It’s hard enough to suffer through the pain of an injury, and to add the constant miscommunication that can come with learning to do something new from someone who cant always demonstrate It themselves makes things worse. Motion Doctor seeks to bridge the gap between therapist and patient by offering a glut of videos that showcase a number of exercises specifically for rehab.
The exercises are organized by body part. I have shoulder issues, and spent much of my time in rehab dealing with them, so I clicked ‘shoulder,’ and was able to watch clips of an attractive model performing exercises I remember being confused by (oh…that’s what he meant by ‘scapular retraction…’). As an educational tool the app is moderately effective, as it shows Bo the exercise and lists the reasoning behind why someone with a knee injury would want to perform them. But it’s very basic. This is not like having a physical therapist in your messenger bag. But it is like having an easy to use pamphlet full of exercise demonstrations that you can take home with you as a reference for when you forget how to do a standing door stretch.
Plus, with the ‘find a therapist’ feature you can search for therapists in your area, which means if you have a shrink ray you could potentially have a therapist in your pocket to couple with Motion Doctor. Any user can appreciate the ‘favorites’ feature that allows you to build a playlist of sorts of the exercises you d most.
Again, Motion Doctor is not a physical therapist. But as an affordable consumer product it’s surer to be useful to the real therapists out there, which means it will be useful to their patients.
I’ve already told my mom about it.
App Store: $14.99
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