Serious Games for Home-based Stroke Rehabilitation.

On average, two thousand residents in the United States experience a stroke every day. These circumstances account for $28 billion direct costs annually and given the latest predictions, these costs will more than triple by 2030. In our research, we propose a portfolio of serious games for home-based stroke rehabilitation. The objective of the game approach is to enrich the training experience and establish a higher level of compliance to prescribed exercises, while maintaining a supportive training environment as found in common therapy sessions. Our system provides a collection of mini games based on rehabilitation exercises used in conventional physical therapy, monitors the patient's performance while exercising and provides clinicians with an interface to personalize the training. The clinician can set the current state of rehabilitation and change the playable games over time to drive diversification. While the system still has to be evaluated, an early stage case study with one patient offered positive indications towards this concept.