Video games are a very popular form of entertainment for many people.
Tapping into this trend, a recent study from the UCSF School of Nursing and Red Hill Studios, a California gaming software developer, postulates that playing computer-based physical therapy games has a positive impact on the gait and balance of patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Per the University of California San Francisco, they were the first research team in the United States to receive federal funding in the emerging field of low-cost computerized physical therapy games. The study was funded by two Small Business Innovative Research grants totaling $1.1 million from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The mission of NINDS, according to the website, is to reduce the burden of neurological disease – a burden borne by every age group, by every segment of society, by people all over the world.
The imedicalapps team has previously reported on the gamification of healthcare, and this is another example of how this trend is developing.
The UCSF team was led by Glenna Dowling, RN, PhD, professor and chair of the UCSF Department of Physiological Nursing, and Marsha Melnick, PT, PhD, a clinical professor in the UCSF School of Medicine’s Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science and professor emerita of the Department of Physical Therapy at San Francisco State University.
“Teams at Red Hill and UCSF collaborated to produce nine “clinically inspired’’ games that were designed to improve coordination in people with Parkinson’s disease, a chronic, progressive neuromuscular disease characterized by shaking, slowness of movement, limb and trunk rigidity. The clinical team members at UCSF focused on specific body movements and gestures that their previous research had shown to be beneficial for staving off the physical declines of Parkinson’s.”
The games that were developed are similar to motion controlled console based games. Systems such as Nintendo’s Wii, Sony Playstation’s Move and Microsoft’s Kinect incorporate motion and gesture sensing technology that mimics and responds to physical movement from the user, providing positive reinforcement when a correct action is completed. A similar notion was used for the development of the physical therapy games.
The trial was composed of 20 participants from California with moderate levels of Parkinson’s disease. According to the report, after playing the games for 12 weeks, 65 percent of game players demonstrated longer stride length, 55 percent increased gait velocity, and 55 percent reported improved balance confidence.
Each physical therapy game has multiple difficulty levels. This design choice was implemented so that the clinical team could tailor each therapeutic game for each subject’s particular abilities and range of movement.
“Each subject found his or her own gaming ‘sweet spot’ — the spot where the physical challenge was not too hard, not too easy, just right,’’ said Bob Hone, creative director of Red Hill Studios and the lead principal investigator of the study. “And when subjects mastered one game level, they often moved on to harder levels for more beneficial effect. The subjects improved their games scores while improving their gait and balance.’’
To interact with the computer game, a custom sensor suit that has nine separate tracking sensors, each used to pinpoint and analyse the patient’s movement, was developed by Red Hill. The suit is much more sophisticated and has higher resolution and accuracy then traditional console gaming systems. In fact, the suit was able to send encrypted data to a secure database allowing the research teams to track individual user’s performance daily.
The results from the trial are promising.
“These initial studies show the promise of custom-designed physical therapy games promoting specific movements and gestures that can help patients get better,’’ Dowling said. “Now that we have this preliminary positive result, we want to conduct a longer term clinical trial with more subjects to confirm these initial findings.’’
A video demonstration of what the technology can do is found on the Red Hill Studios website.
Source: UCSF
