http://www.fastcompany.com
Nintendo's Wii has been used for a while now by physical therapists, but a revolutionary new platform could transform the game system into an at-home recovery tool, with therapists overseeing progress over 3G.
A revolutionary rehabilitation system has stroke patients ambling onto Wii Balance boards--at home--to play versions of games like Wii Resort and Wii Sports, under the watchful eye of a remotely located therapist. For the first time, therapists can assign "homework therapy," giving patients an opportunity to get continuous monitored therapy services and rehab at home with ease.
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"Wehab" is the brainchild of researchers at the University of Notre Dame, and it aims to change the future of stroke therapy. A great deal of balance retraining is needed for stroke patients to perform basic tasks like walking and dressing; rehabilitation requires the patient to put in many hours every day and is often a tedious, time consuming and expensive process. Therapists typically use mirrors and guesswork to assess any progress patients make and it is easy to miss out on little improvements. Given only subjective feedback and constrained by needing to visit a hospital or a therapy center physically, patients can take months or years to regain their motor functions.
"Patients do improve with training, but they do it very slowly," says Dr. Sergi Bermúdez i Badia, an expert in interactive technologies for neuro-rehabilitation at the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute in Portugal. "What is really needed here is real time feedback on performance that can be given to patients that they can understand and use to correct their pose or movements."
More info and Video of the software here
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