SBIR Phase II: An immersive virtual reality platform for remote physical therapy and monitoring

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project concerns greater affordability, accessibility, and accuracy of physical therapy for patients and therapists. The product to be commercialized will contribute to developing innovation around immersive telehealth experiences, exploring the future of work for physical rehabilitation in the metaverse, establishing standards in embodied telehealth, and grounding novel scientific research methods within VR for healthcare from a California-based startup with the goal of increasing access to care. Establishing a remote immersive virtual platform will provide a means for in-patient success metrics and full-body virtual guidance. Patient throughput potentially could be doubled through remote visits in virtual environments and automated physical health documentation. The platform will be designed with accessibility in mind with patients from "medical deserts," where patient care is significantly limited by hospital capacity, physical distance, doctors per population, and cost. Remote physical rehabilitation tools and predictive physical therapy analytics will benefit patients without adequate insurance coverage. This technology could lower hospital visits, enable clinics to remain open during future pandemic periods, decrease costs for patients and clinics alike, and begin detecting physical health needs earlier to help manage the pace of recovery. The proposed project aims to expand a novel physical rehabilitation telehealth solution through the continued research of an instrumented and gamified immersive virtual reality platform for physical therapy and healthcare monitoring. This technology addresses the shortcomings of widely used telehealth platforms (often videoconferencing) where therapists find it difficult to perform common evaluations such as movement abilities and balance coordination tests. The solution will expand upon an embodied telehealth platform with 3D virtual avatars and predictive AI tools to assess user biomechanics in real-time extending to full-body assessment while providing normative assessment metrics, creating a goal standard for remote physical therapy care. The development method will continue to utilize user-centered design with a panel of therapists to ensure accessibility and usability of the prototype systems by their relevant stakeholders. Such research will incorporate predictive biomechanical analysis to increase the reliability and repeatability of physical therapy measures and exercise programs for remote monitoring at the clinic or the patient’s home. Iterative prototyping with user experience will be conducted to establish in-patient success metrics and full-body virtual assessment. This innovation will enable greater affordability, usability, and effectiveness of physical therapy for patients and therapists. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.