Mobile-based Environment to Facilitate Rehabilitation of Adults Post-Injuries

Abstract

Rehabilitation is a vital process for adult people after injury to regain their quality of life. This paper proposes a mobile-based system for upper limb rehabilitation to overcome a lack of motivation that occurs in the conventional one. Recent studies found that poor adherence to physiotherapy sessions refers to many reasons, one of them is the lack of motivation. Accordingly, conducting therapeutic sessions in the form of serious games will surely motivate patients more, hence helping them to improve their quality of life. In this work, therefore, we propose two serious mobile games to facilitate post-injures rehabilitation, which utilize smartphone's accelerometer sensor to control the game. Since the proposed system depends on User Centered Design (UCD) approach, two prototypes were tested. The First Prototype targets elbow and shoulder joints. To cover these mentioned joints' exercises, the game is developed into three levels: first-level targets elbow extension. The second one includes two sub-levels; first one targets wrist supination/pronation, second sub-level combines both wrist supination and elbow extension. In the third level, the patient must perform wrist supination/pronation, and elbow flexion/extension. Second prototype includes three different games which target wrist supination/pronation, forearm supination/pronation, shoulder flexion, shoulder horizontal adduction/abduction, and elbow flexion/extension. As a pilot evaluation many visits to a rehabilitation center were arranged, the therapist confirmed that the game covers those mentioned exercises and selected three convenient recruited cases to play the game and check its usability. They stated that the system covers some conventional exercises they perform; they provided feedback that helped in system enhancement prior to final evaluation. As a final evaluation the system was tested for twelve sessions by one case, with a progress rate of 1.7 ±0.38, and 3 ±0.9 cm for both anterior, and lateral scales respectively.