Completed Heart, Stroke & Blood Bones, Joints & Muscles

Limbs Alive Monitoring of Upper Limb Rehabilitation and Recovery after Stroke Through Gaming.

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation Newcastle University
Funding £1.5M
Period Jan 2012 — Dec 2016

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Every year, 120,000 people in the UK have a stroke and are left without enough NHS rehabilitation for their arms and hands. The problem is practical: the NHS lacks the staff and resources to deliver the intensive, repetitive upper-limb therapy that drives recovery. Most patients are sent home with little more than a leaflet. This project aims to change that by turning rehabilitation into a video game. The researchers have already built a library of action games that require coordinated, bimanual movements—the same patterns needed for daily tasks like opening a jar or carrying a tray. Special controllers track the patient’s body and hand positions accurately. The next step is to link these games to a cloud server that lets therapists monitor progress remotely, analyse impairment, and give feedback, all while the patient plays at home. If the system works, it could transform stroke recovery. Patients would regain dexterity faster, become more independent, and reduce their lifelong need for NHS and social care. Carers would also benefit. The project will test the system in a feasibility study and develop a business model to bring it to market. This is applied research with a clear, near-term goal: to make effective rehabilitation scalable and affordable within the NHS.

View original technical description
a) The unmet healthcare need The NHS lacks resources to deliver comprehensive upper limb rehabilitation to 120,000 people annually with new stroke. b) The technology to be developed We have produced a library of professionally written action-video games for upper limb rehabilitation. Incorporated into game-control are different functional patterns of co-ordinated bimanual movements, which form the basis for activities of daily living1,2. Controllers accurately track body and hand positions. This project will deliver and validate the technology and analytical routines for tele-monitoring of game-play, degree of impairment and ability to perform the target movements, with feedback to patients and therapists. Anonymised data will provide audit of the overall system. c) The key goals and deliverables We aim to i) develop and then conduct a feasibility study of a validated system for monitoring homebased upper limb rehabilitation using action-video games, data analysis algorithms and cloud server technology, which integrates with the operational systems of the NHS, is easy to use for patients and health professionals and carers for large numbers of simultaneous users. ii) identify a sustainable business model and route to market. d) The healthcare impact Home-based, therapist monitored, tele-rehabilitation using action-video games and server technology will improve recovery of bimanual dexterity after stroke, increase independence and quality of life for the patient and their carer and reduce the life-long need for NHS and Social support3-

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Janet Eyre (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Limbs Alive - Monitoring of Upper Limb Rehabilitation and Recovery after Stroke through Gaming
Limbs Alive: Use of computer games to provide motivating, child centred therapy to improve bimanual skills for children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy.
Gameball: A novel platform to provide enjoyable and affordable hand and arm rehabilitation following a stroke
VR gaming has proven to be uniquely valuable for stroke rehabilitation.
Social-network collaborative gaming for population-level physical disability training

Original classification

Health Innovation Challenge Fund Award

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.