Telerehabilitation is a novel phenomenon in Finland. Even though telerehabilitation has been experimented, using the full potential of information technology and human-computer interaction in physiotherapy is still in its early days.

There has been a significant increase in electronic services. To keep up with the changing services, innovations are required also in the field of physiotherapy. Especially in sparsely populated areas, distances are getting longer to the areas where the services are provided. At the same time, the majority of population is getting older, which increases the need for support for the elderly to cope with living at home. For these vital reasons alone, there is a need for developing the potential of electronic services. Virtual rehabilitation offers a wide range of opportunities. However, it has not yet been explored how virtual rehabilitation can be adapted to the intended use of physiotherapeutic methods.

The purpose of this literature review was to find out research results on the physiotherapeutic methods used when postoperative shoulder joint physiotherapy is carried out as telerehabilitation. I started to collect material in November-December 2016. As my thesis progressed, I continued collecting material also in February-March 2017, as the search entries needed to be modified and elaborated. I researched material in CINAHL, Medic, PubMed, Terveysportti and Pedro. I also researched manual sources, such as the Fysioterapia publication. The search matches were scarce, supposedly because the terms and concepts that are in the process of evolving do not yet correspond to each other in Finnish and English. Finnish publications handling telerehabilitation were primarily project final reports.

In my research I used Finnish search entries “olkanivel”, “postoperatiivinen fysioterapia” and “etäkuntoutus”. The terms were translated into English to be able to use a set of search entries that was as comprehensive as possible. Also, some of the databases used were only in the English language. The search entries in English were “shoulder joint”, “postoperative physiotherapy”, “telerehabilitation” and “physical therapy modalities”.