Wii, Kinect and SimplyHome & Tech-savvy Seniors

Wii, Kinect and SimplyHome – Tech-savvy Seniors (via http://send2pressnewswire.com)

ASHEVILLE, N.C., Nov. 16 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — So, what do Microsoft’s new Xbox Kinect, Nintendo’s Wii and SimplyHome have in common? SimplyHome’s assistive technology is bringing its clients to the next level in independent living and underlying innuendos in Wii and Kinect may also have…

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Nintendo Wii rehabilitates stroke victims

Jan. 9, 2013, 4:30 a.m.

UP TO 20 stroke victims are being sought for a new rehabilitation program that uses Nintendo Wii being trialled in Armidale.

Penelope McNulty, a neurophysiologist at Neuroscience Research Australia, said between 60 and 90 people in Armidale suffered a stroke every year.

She called for volunteers for the 14-day program, which will take place at the Broadband Smart House in Queen Elizabeth Drive later this month.

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“The therapy uses latest information about the neuroplasticity of the brain to help rehabilitate stroke victims, “ Dr McNulty said yesterday.

“It’s an intensive, regime based on the Wii that results in significant improvements in the way stroke patients are able to use their hands and arms.

“The Wii is inexpensive, easy to use and fun. This type of rehabilitation motivates patients to complete their therapy, which is essential to maximise recovery.”

Dr McNulty will follow the progress of the volunteers through Skype from her Sydney office.
Volunteers must be able to make their way independently to the home in Queen Elizabeth Drive and provide details of a carer.

Volunteers must also have some disability in one upper limb. They will use the Wii remote in their more affected hand to control play and augment their formal therapy with daily home practice that progressively builds towards three hours per day over the program.

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Can exergames increase physical activity?

Posted by John Ferrara on June 7, 2012

Earlier this year, a study published in the journal Pediatrics found that five games that are marketed with the promise of increasing players' physical fitness produced no actual difference in activity. 78 kids between 9 and 12 were given Wii consoles, and then one group was given a couple of exergames while a control group was given "inactive" games like Madden and Mario Kart. The kids wore devices to measure their physical activity, and they kept logs of when they played.

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To be certain, the study was performed by a very accomplished group of researchers. The lead author, Tom Baranowski of Baylor College, is one of the most widely published researchers of health games. And this was a very well-designed study, printed in the foremost journal on children's health. Nevertheless, the study should not be read to mean that games can't affect physical activity and can't have a positive impact on public health. That's because it didn't account for the most influential factor in a health game's impact -- its design.

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President’s Council on Fitness backs Wii, Kinect and other video games.

By Lenny Bernstein,
Published: May 15

I couldn’t ignore the irony in the April 30 announcement that the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition had decided to team up with the Entertainment Software Association to demonstrate “how to use video games to promote physical activity.”

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There are so many active video games on the market now that the term “exergaming” entered the lexicon a few years ago. Today, you can find Wii bowling in assisted-living facilities and Dance Dance Revolution in West Virginia schools. The American Heart Association has already teamed with Nintendo. The managed-care giant UnitedHealth Group announced last week that it believes “the intersection of health and video gaming holds enormous potential benefit for individuals, families and the entire health care system.”

So perhaps it was inevitable that the venerable government organization and the trade group that has its hands on the controls of today’s youth entertainment would get together. Under the plan, kids can earn their Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA+) certificate by using active games to help them get 60 minutes of exercise, five days a week for six weeks. Adults must move for 30 minutes a day. There is also a nutrition component to the challenge (hence the “plus” in PALA+).

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Neuroscientists develop game for stroke rehabilitation, give the Wii a run for its money

By Alexis Santos posted May 20th 2012

Think the Wii has the market cornered on gaming rehab? Think again -- neuroscientists at Newcastle University are developing a series of motion controlled video games to make stroke rehab more fun and accessible. The team's first title, dubbed Circus Challenge, lets patients digitally throw pies, tame lions and juggle to help them build strength and regain motor skills. As players progress, the game ratchets up its difficulty, presumably to match pace with their recovery.

Although Limbs Alive, the game's publisher, has only described their motion controller as "next-generation," it affirms that the game will be playable on PCs, laptops and tablets later this year. In an effort to lower costs and provide at-home therapy, the team hopes to leverage a £1.5 million award from the UK's Health Innovation Challenge Fund to build a system that will allow therapists to monitor patient progress remotely. The whole enchilada still needs some time to bake, but you can hit the break for a video and the full press release.

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Promoting health and fitness through exergames - presentation

by Kristina Ticknor on May 07, 2012

Presented at the CDC's Health Communication, Marketing and Media Conference

Promoting health and fitness through exergames

View more PowerPoint from Kristina Ticknor

Personalised Wii technology offers stroke survivors a helping hand in rehabilitation

Taking inspiration from the Nintendo Wii, researchers at Brunel University have developed a new prototype technology to improve rehabilitation programmes for stroke survivors. ReWiiRe is a custom made programme which can be operated on any computer and tailored to individual needs. It is designed to support stroke survivors so that they can continue their rehabilitation in the comfort of their own homes.

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One of the biggest barriers stroke survivors face is in keeping motivated to continue rehabilitation exercises outside of clinical settings. When using ReWiiRe, patients can check to see that they are performing the exercises in the right way, can see how they are progressing and improving, and can stay motivated by playing games.

The first stage of the research assessed the potential for Wii technology in stroke rehabilitation by trialling the standard console with patients in the NHS. These findings showed that whilst patients were keen to use the technology to support their rehabilitation at home, the configuration of standard Wii games was too complex, limiting the benefits available to patients.

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Virtual therapy cord injury patients compete in the digital world.

BY NADINE WILSON Jamaican Observer

Sunday, April 01, 2012

THE single bullet that shattered his spine and his dreams of becoming a track and field coach has not stopped 19-year-old paraplegic, Domingo Blake, from becoming a champion in the boxing ring.
Blake, who was shot last year, said he competed in boxing for the first time just two weeks ago, and already he is hooked. The game is even more fun for him, because he gets to compete against his able-bodied physiotherapist in the virtual boxing world created by the Nintendo Wii gaming system.

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The Nintendo Wii is an interactive system that relies on wireless controllers and a sensor bar to capture all of the movements and buttons that players use when using a special remote. It comes packaged with "Wii Sports," which is based on physical motion. This means that patients must move their bodies as much as possible to mimic the moves that they can see themselves creating in the virtual world on a television screen.

Although Blake was told he would never walk again, the paraplegic has been able to compete in activities such as cycling, boxing and canoeing, thanks to the virtual gaming platform. The youngster is one of two patients with spinal cord injuries who are currently using the virtual reality video game as part of physical therapy to retrain their cardiopulmonary system as part of research being conducted by the University of the West Indies, Mona, School of Physical Therapy (SPT).

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Home-based upper limb rehabilitation using a modified Wii system

Study aims

The Wii Stroke Therapy for Arm Rehabilitation (Wii STAR) study (formerly the Upper Limb Rehabilitation study) aims to investigate the possibility of using low cost commercially available components employed in the games market to encourage patients to practice the upper limb movements required for the completion of everyday tasks.

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Why is the project necessary?
Between 55 and 75% of stroke survivors fail to regain functional use of their impaired upper limb. Previous research has shown that a considerable amount of practice is required to achieve an improvement in upper limb ability. However, after discharge from hospital access to sufficient rehabilitation is often difficult to achieve, due to cost, distance and availability of rehabilitation services. Whilst several robotic systems to aid upper limb rehabilitation have been developed, their promise, costs, size and requirement for technical support has resulted in them only being suitable for use in the hospital environment and not for home use.

Findings so far
Harnessing the motivating power of computer games, Nintendo have developed the Wii Fit and several centres have been encouraging patients to use Nintendo's Wii to increase their level of activity. However for most stroke patients the Wiimote is too bulky to hold if their grip is still affected. In conjunction with users, we have been developing a low cost, low maintenance virtual reality system as a method of delivering intensive, task specific upper limb exercises for patients after stroke in their own home prior to a definitive trial. The intervention consists of a virtual glove that enables the capture of the location of the hand, fingers and thumb. In order to play the accompanying games, the user must perform movements that underpin functional activities such as reach to grasp, grasp and release and pronation and supination. The development of the system followed a recognised procedure for the involvement of users.
As a result of feedback from patients and therapists and the emergence of new gaming technology the glove itself has gone through several stages of development to ensure it is robust, easy to put on and wear and that the games are sufficiently motivating to encourage players to repeat the movements at the frequency required to improve their arm function.

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Can a video game make you fit?

by Johnny Minkley, Nov 24, 2011

You could point to Wii Sports as the active gaming's 'Big Bang' moment, or, going even further back, Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series in arcades and on PlayStations – the first game series, to my knowledge, to feature a calorie counter.

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But it wasn't until Wii Fit in 2007 that video game fitness became Big Business. Here's some hardcore stat-porn for you: Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus have sold over 40 million copies, making them among the biggest selling home console titles in history; the Balance Board, that plastic tray Nintendo made for Wii Fit, had shifted over 34 million units by the end of last year; and Zumba Fitness, the awful cash-in based on that terrifying dance craze enjoyed by wild-eyed women, spent ten weeks at number one in the UK all-formats games chart this year.

The classic hardcore gamer response is either to sneer at fat idiots frittering away more money chasing an impossible dream, or to despair at the credibility collapse of their special hobby.

 Me? I think the craze is brilliant. Yes, most fitness gamers are (ironically) lazy, rubbish bandwagon jumpers. But I happen to believe it is a wonderful thing that the entertainment medium I have been obsessed with for most of my life is evolving to become something more than just entertainment, something that actually contributes to the social good (which I wrote about in more detail in a previous column).

cont...

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Game your way to healthy living

Friday, Nov 04, 2011, AsiaOne

SINGAPORE - Exercising and working your body to better health does not have to be boring, as new gaming technologies being introduced in Singapore hospitals show. Using video games and interactive technologies to improve health is fast catching on in Singapore, with The Straits Times (ST) reporting that several rehabilitation centres here have taken up offering interactive technologies alongside conventional therapies to improve conditions ranging from stroke, burn wounds to even learning difficulties.

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In the National University of Singapore (NUH), a Nintendo Wii game designed by Singapore Polytechnic students encourages stroke patients to exercise their arms by playing games such as flipping burger patties on a barbecue grill. The sweeping movements work the patients' hands and wrists and help strengthen muscles and another game, designed by Temasek Polytechnic students, gets patients to move a spaceship side to side on a screen using the Kinect to avoid getting hit by asteroids. The award-winning game does not allow patients to maneuver the spaceship using their bodies or legs, and similarly helps in the rehabilitation of arm nerves and muscles affected by a stroke.

 The Kinect and Wii are a motion-sensing gaming devices that use hand controllers to interact and play games on a screen. Therapists and rehabilitation doctors interviewed by ST say this is just the start, and there is much potential in harnessing gaming technologies for therapeutic purposes. Already, Singapore General Hospital (SGH) uses a webcam-based program called Ovogame while Changi General Hospital and TTSH use the Wii or Kinect.

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Video Games Help ICU Patients With Physical Therapy

October 11, 2011

Video Games Help ICU Patients With Physical Therapy,

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Interactive video games on consoles such as the Nintendo Wii and Wii Fit can enhance physical therapy for patients in intensive care units, according to a study published in the Journal of Critical Care, United Press International reports.


Methodology
For the one-year study, researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine evaluated 22 patients ages 32 to 64 who were admitted to the hospital for cardiovascular disease, respiratory failure, sepsis or other health issues (United Press International, 10/8).

The patients participated in 42 physical therapy sessions that included 20 minutes of playing interactive video games featuring boxing, bowling, balance boards and other activities aimed at improving stamina and balance (Walker, "Picture of Health," Baltimore Sun, 10/3).


Study Findings
Researchers found that the interactive video games increased patients' interest in physical therapy (Galbraith, Examiner, 10/4). Dale Needham, senior author of the study, said, "[W]hen properly selected and supervised by experienced physical therapists, patients enjoyed the challenge of the video games and welcomed the change from their physical therapy routines" (United Press International, 10/8).

Needham added that video games are cost effective compared with other physical therapies used in ICUs. Michelle Kho, study leader, said additional research is needed to determine "what physical therapy goals best benefit from video games" (Examiner, 10/4)

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