Digital Transformation of Rehabilitation Care: A Systems-Based Narrative Review and Conceptual Framework for Connected, Intelligent, and Hybrid Rehabilitation

Digital transformation is reshaping rehabilitation through remote monitoring, artificial intelligence, digitally supported home programs, and new combinations of in-person and remote care. However, existing evidence is often organized around individual technologies, limiting understanding of how these components interact within rehabilitation systems. This narrative review synthesizes current evidence and proposes a systems-based framework that conceptualizes digital rehabilitation through three interacting capabilities: connected, intelligent, and hybrid rehabilitation. Targeted literature searches were supplemented by citation searching, and the selected evidence was synthesized thematically around recurring rehabilitation functions and socio-technical implementation conditions to develop the conceptual framework. Connected rehabilitation enables the acquisition and exchange of clinically meaningful information across people and settings; intelligent rehabilitation transforms these data into interpretation, prediction, feedback, personalization, and adaptation; and hybrid rehabilitation coordinates care across settings, modalities, levels of supervision, and time. Evidence indicates that telerehabilitation and digitally supported home programs can achieve outcomes comparable to conventional rehabilitation in selected populations, whereas evidence for AI-driven personalization remains less mature and clinically inconsistent. The proposed framework positions these capabilities within a broader socio-technical system involving patients and caregivers, rehabilitation professionals, organizations, and health systems. Their clinical value depends on interoperability, data governance, professional oversight, workflow integration, reimbursement, equity, and sustained evaluation. Digital transformation should therefore augment professional judgment and enable adaptive, person-centred rehabilitation pathways rather than simply replace conventional care with technology.