Many of us have heard of nursing homes and rehab centers using the Nintendo Wii for rehab and exercise purposes, however there are some schools of medicine that want to take the technology one step further: to virtual reality. In an article from PubMed, a scholarly journal, Keshner (Northwestern University) explains, "Many people question why we don't just have subjects perform motor tasks in the real world. The answer to this question is that VR offers us the opportunity to bring the complexity of the physical world into the controlled environment of the laboratory." In a virtual reality setting there is more precise control over what the patient experiences and on the tasked they are asked to accomplish. Keshner explains further:
There are numerous strengths underlying the use of VR with rehabilitation [11,12]. Among these are that VR provides the opportunity for ecological validity, stimulus control and consistency, real-time performance feedback, independent practice, stimulus and response modifications that are contingent on a user's physical abilities, a safe testing and training environment, the opportunity for graduated exposure to stimuli, the ability to distract or augment the performer's attention, and perhaps most important to therapeutic intervention, motivation for the performer.
It's plain to see that the benefits of VR in rehabilitation are great and would allow rehabilitation practitioners to accurately measure a patients progress. Not only is this a form of virtual communication, but most importantly the practitioner would receiver a large amount of data feedback. If interested here is a link to the article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC546404/
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I too believe that there are great implications for virtual reality in rehab. The past few years the combination of medicine and technology has been a touchy subject with ideas of stem cells and other capabilities but in the realm of virtual reality, I think it's an easy acceptance. The possibilities for VR in rehab could be tremendous.
ReplyDeletea great example! Please add the link to the URL.
ReplyDeleteVR would make a lot of sense in rehab. If anything it puts a practical sort of measurement on one's progress. But even more so as the excerpt brought up, being able to control how much they're exposed to a certain stimuli changes everything. If variables can be controlled, one can be set on a certain track with measured results.
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