VR4REHAB – Virtual Reality for Rehabilitation 

Is it possible to develop rehabilitation training to be practiced in the comfort of your home? How to provide a motivating environment to make the train more fun for the patient?

We often ask ourselves these questions, especially during this period when a greater social distancing is imposed on us.  The VR4REHAB Project demonstrates how using VR technologies can improve the rehabilitation process.

The VR4Rehab project specifically focuses on enabling the co-creation of Virtual Reality-based rehabilitation tools. By identifying and combining forces from SMEs active in the field of VR, Research Institute, clinics, and patients VR4Rehab aims at creating a network in which the state-of-the-art of VR-technology could meet the rehabilitation potential and thus answer to the needs of patients and of their therapists.

Although VR technologies are widely diffused in several industries, there are not tools specifically designed to provide laypersons with an environment that enables them and their therapists to safely extend rehabilitation extramurally.

VR can help optimizing rehabilitation protocols, accelerating patients’ recovery, promoting treatment adherence, and easing reintegration into daily life. VR4Rehab particularly addresses the rehabilitation of children affected by chronic diseases and disability, as well as adults stricken with fatigue and pain, providing them with challenging VR interventions.

VR4REHAB’s long-term project is to represent a meeting point between SMEs and medical experts, to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and collaboration, and to realize the potential for innovation that emerges from the intersection between VR technologies and the demand from rehabilitation clinic specialists and patients for modern protocols for musculoskeletal rehabilitation.

Eight teams, (respectively: Adherence, Crystal Ball, Hands Around the World, Move VRee, Moving Reality, Pain Toolkit, Trunky XL, and VR Traveller) are currently working to provide the patients with challenging VR interventions. During the prototypes’ construction phase, actually, in progress, the VR and AR prototypes are being tested with patients and clinical personnel, before the final products can be finally developed and introduced to the VR market.

Discover more about VR4REHAB at EuroVR 2020 Conference
–
VR4REHAB-VR for Rehabilitation, on 27 November from 10.00 to 12.00 CEST.