Rapid Prototyping of Virtual Reality Cognitive Exercises in a Tele-Rehabilitation Context

Abstract

In recent years, the need to contain healthcare costs due to the growing public debt of many countries, combined with the need to reduce costly travel by patients unable to move autonomously, have captured the attention of public administrators towards tele-rehabilitation. This trend has been consolidated overwhelmingly following the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made it precarious, difficult and even dangerous for patients to access hospital facilities. We present an approach based on the rapid prototyping of virtual reality, cognitive tele-rehabilitation exercises, which reinforce the group of exercises available in the Nu!reha platform. Patients who experienced injury or pathology need to practice continuous training in order to recover functional abilities, and the therapist needs to monitor the outcomes of such practices. The group of new exercises based on the rapid prototyping approach, become crucial especially in this pandemic period. The Virtual Reality exercises are designed on Unity 3D to empower the therapist to set up personalized exercises in an easy way, enabling the patient to receive personalized stimuli, which are essential for a positive outcome in the practice. Furthermore, the reaction speed of the system is of fundamental importance, as the temporal evolution of the scene must proceed parallel to the patient’s movements, to ensure an effective and efficient therapeutic response. So, we optimized the virtual reality application in order to make the loading phase and the startup phase as fast as possible and we have tested the results obtained with many devices: in particular computers and smartphones with different operating systems and hardware. The implemented method powers up the Nu!Reha system®, a collection of tele-rehabilitation services that helps patients to recover cognitive and functional capabilities.

Empowering Knowledge With Virtual and Augmented Reality

“…These days, VR and AR are used for various purposes. From the fields of entertainment [28,29], education [30,31,32,33], tourism [34,35,36,37,38,39], networking and communications [40,41], microelectronic and high-performances hardware industries [42], e-commerce [25,43,44], medicine [45,46,47,48,49]. The thought may be to establish computerised conditions to upgrade abilities, information, and capabilities in mathematics, which can diminish tension and further develop results [50].…”

Deploying Serious Games for Cognitive Rehabilitation

“…In fact, it is argued that their application in education can increase the likelihood of providing students with a real and deep form of learning [17,18]. The use of virtual reality and augmented reality seems to have a profound positive influence on activating specific areas of the brain; this gave rise to the idea of stimulating specific nerve centres to recover functionality that had gradually been lost due to illnesses or traumatic events [19]. Therefore, in recent years, there has been an increase in interest in bringing healthcare services that can be operated remotely.…”

A Mobile App to Help People Affected by Visual Snow

“…While there is plenty of scope for research from a clinical point of view, our proposal fits into a virtually new segment in terms of applied technology. There is a great deal of work using automated solutions for disease recognition [16][17][18] and many others using virtual and augmented reality for diagnosis and rehabilitation [19][20][21][22]. Virtual reality is becoming an increasingly important technology in the generation of synthetic environments [23] within which therapists and patients can move easily, making everything extremely customisable.…”