Advancing Social and Assistive Support in Virtual Worlds for Injured Veterans

Our Phase 1 objective is to identify appropriate technologies that can improve communication and engagement in the Second Life (SL) virtual world (VW), and to determine new methods that allow for enhanced physical therapist and patient interaction in-world. There is a growing need for third party VW development targeted at specific groups, especially in health care domains, which tend to be more demanding than purely social or entertainment activities. VWs such as SL already have much of the basic architecture needed to create innovative solutions. They need a focused approach to determine which of the available tools can be adapted to better health offerings. In Phase 1 we will assess technologies for inclusion in the Second Life AVESS environment with a focus on enhancing communication, immersion, physical therapy and data monitoring. In addition we will determine the technical feasibility of implementing the proposed technology and develop an initial concept design and model key elements for inclusion within Second Life along with demo success criteria.