IndividualizedVestibular Rehabilitation for Elderly with Self-Management and Gaming Elements

Project Summary AbstractVestibular rehabilitation has been proven to be effective in reducing dizziness and falls in elderlybut patient adherence is a major problemRecent research shows that less than half of patients complete their rehabilitationSome of the main reasons for this are the numerous visits that are required and accessibilityIn particular for elderly who experience dizziness and or fallsit may be difficult to travel to attend rehabilitation sessionsIn additionrehabilitation programs become expensive in terms of equipment and health professionalandapos s timePrograms may also not be available to all that may benefit because of geographical limitationsPrevious research has shown that remote monitoring and gaming elements have great potential to solve these issueseven in an elderly populationCurrent solutions are however generic and effectiveness can be inconsistentThe overall goal of this project is to develop a vestibular rehabilitation app for the elderly that will improve adherence through gamingself managementand remote monitoringSpecificallywe will develop games that are controlled by low cost sensors that are placed on the patientsandaposbodyhead and waistThis allows simultaneous monitoring of patient progress while performing the exercisesThese data can be shared with a clinician via email or the cloudallowing the patient to perform the rehabilitation at their homeThis removes one of the main obstacles to patient adherenceThe vestibular rehabilitation components will be packaged in a phone or tablet app that is easy to navigate for elderly and has a modular design that allows individualized rehabilitationThe app will be designed to improve patient engagement with rehabilitation and improve enjoyment with the aim to further improve adherence to rehabilitationThis project will use an approach that is novel in that it develops rehabilitation games that specifically target vestibular rehabilitation and incorporates this in an app that is targeting an elderly populationCurrent approaches typically use existing or commercial gamesThe use of sensors for remote monitoring is also novel in this area and allows patients to perform rehabilitation at their homewhile being monitored by a clinicianThis project is therefore likely to have a high clinical impactIt could advance clinical practice and make vestibular rehabilitation more accessible to elderly and help adherence to programsOn the longer term this will reduce falls and improve quality of life of elderly Project NarrativeThe overall goal of this project is to develop an app for the elderly that will improve accessibility of vestibular rehabilitation and that will improve compliance compared to current rehabilitation programsWe will use a novel approach that will combine low cost inertial sensors with smart phone or tablet technology to measure performance and present this in a comprehensible way to the clinician via email or the cloudremoving the patientsandaposneed to travel for rehabilitation sessionsThis will be packaged in an app that is easy to navigate and will use gaming elements developed for vestibular rehabilitationand appropriate and appealing to the elderly target group to improve complianceopposed to current rehabilitation thatif using balance gamesuses existing commercial games targeting a younger group