Background
Technology has revolutionized the way the medical industry evaluates, diagnoses, and treats patients. For instance, the Human Rehabilitation Lab at MIT has developed robot arms which allow physical therapy patients to play a series of games as part of their rehabilitation process. Likewise, the Glenrose Rehabilitation Center in Alberta, Canada has recently added a touch screen table as a rehabilitation tool to their facilities. This table allows recovering patients, such as stroke victims, the ability to play simple games as part of the process to regain their motor skills. Similarly, Healing Touch will incorporate comparative technology to advance a patient‟s condition. To accomplish this goal, Healing Touch utilizes the Microsoft Surface and the Apple iPad to not only rehabilitate the patients, but also supply THR clinicians with valuable data, so that these clinicians can provide improved treatment to future patients.
Scope and Objectives
Healing Touch is a computerized system designed to provide therapeutic and rehabilitative exercises through gaming on multi-user, multi-touch devices. Several games have been developed for the system that focus on testing a variety of abilities such as deductive reasoning, short-term memory, neuromuscular coordination, and social skills. Results collected through these gaming sessions are used to generate reports for monitoring patient outcomes. The repeated play of these games provides an interactive and engaging method of rehabilitation for patients. Healing Touch is being developed for Texas Health Resources (THR) utilizing the Microsoft Surface and Apple iPad as the multi-touch gaming platforms.