Physiotherapy for neurodivergent children is made engaging and fun using gamified exercises using emerging technologies.
Analytics from the games and motion sensors are helping both the children and their doctors keep track of the child’s overall development.
Elderly people needing physiotherapy and patients going through rehabilitation can also use the application.
India’s 2011 census revealed that nearly 26.8 million people in the country had some form of disability.
And a significant percentage of persons with disabilities (PWDs) suffer from locomotor disabilities, with their ability to move independently severely impacted.
One such condition is cerebral palsy (CP), which affects muscle development and movement. Autism—a neuro-developmental disorder affecting children's communication, socialization, and cognition— is another such condition that sees a large percentage of children being excluded from mainstream activities.
To retain a degree of independence and control, children with autism and CP require regular physiotherapy and the use of physical aids. Growth in digital technologies has opened up possibilities, making this field ripe for disruption.
An example of this is TCS Virtual Therapy Assistant, created at TCS Rapid Innovation Labs. The “assistant” is a wearable virtual rehabilitation tool to improve the physiotherapy experience for children with locomotor disabilities, support their independent movement, and enable their overall development.
This social innovation has used assistive technologies such as pose analytics, computer vision, and pressure sensors to detect gesture movements and introduce gamification to give children a fun and immersive physiotherapy experience as part of physical rehabilitation.
This virtual therapy and wellness tool can also be applied in physiotherapy for the elderly to make routine exercises fun and can help recovering ICU patients requiring rehabilitation through physiotherapy to improve their movement and thereby their overall physical health following discharge from a medical facility.
A TCS team created personalized simulated environments for a group of children who had autism or CP as part of their physiotherapy regimen.
The team worked with a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the southern Indian state of Kerala, where these personalized simulated environments could be explored on-screen through motion sensors during their physiotherapy regimen.
The TCS Virtual Therapy Assistant tool is modernized and accessible, requiring a simple desktop-based application to be set up and utilizing the webcam to sense a child’s motion. It offers the following features:
These features offer an immersive experience that leads to the release of positive hormones, making the entire process enjoyable. Engaging user interface coupled with the webcam as the sole input mechanism makes the virtual therapy assistant cost effective and user friendly. Furthermore, it generates comprehensive reports as it tracks improvements in finger movements, larger muscle movement activities such as walking, and overall skill development. Last but not least, caregivers can download these reports and review them offline to view progress.
Additionally, a small, 3-D printed device, created in-house by the TCS team, is used exclusively to map fine motor skills. With exercise no longer boring or a chore, the tool motivates users to complete their physiotherapy schedule daily and serves the larger purpose of ensuring and preserving muscle control.
Gamification has been key in making this solution work.
Watching their ‘avatars’ explore detailed environments on-screen motivates children to complete their individual exercise routines.
As the children progress through varied difficulty levels of therapy, their avatars keep amassing points. Researchers tracking the device’s use and progress have observed that the children now love to compete and keep track of their respective scores.
Now in an updated version, the tool has helped students significantly improve movement and locomotor actions.
Piloted in June 2017, TCS Virtual Therapy Assistant is now deployed across three institutes for specially abled children in Kerala posting favorable results.
Now in an updated version, the tool has helped students significantly improve movement and locomotor actions.
TCS has five global innovation hubs, each of which is called a TCS Pace Port™. The virtual therapy assistant has now been deployed at the TCS Pace Ports in New York and Amsterdam to track its impact and traction on a more global level. It resonated with two TCS clients, who have now adopted the assistive technology device as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR), deploying it across various schools in India.
In an effort to boost social inclusion, there are now plans to have a virtual visualization platform to educate students about movement in multiple scenarios, such as visiting a shopping mall, a hospital, or a railway station.
What the assistant has accomplished on an individual level is to bring a sense of independence and joy to the lives of many who have felt trapped and helpless. Technology can deliver agency. TCS’s Virtual Therapy Assistant is clear evidence of this.