Boosting physical and psychological well-being in rehabilitation through cognitive technologies preliminary results

Orthopaedic rehabilitation is a hot topic since the increasing age of the population in western countries implies that more and more people require invasive and inabilitating orthopaedic surgery, such as knee substitution, in order to recover physical functionality, autonomy and quality of life. Consequently, it's fundamental to test rehabilitation treatment able to increase efficacy and reliability of treatment, both with the aim to improve outcomes and decrease days of hospital stay. In this sense, Neurocognitive driven technology may have a great impact in this field. Starting by the paradigm of Action Observation Treatment, we have designed a pilot study using a 3D environment and wearable bio-sensors to boost rehabilitation in collaboration with an important orthopaedic hospital in Milan, Italy. We hypothized that the use of a 3D environment would decrease the time required for the recovery of motor functionality with respect to a 2D environment or to a standard treatment. We sampled 26 patients who accepted to participate in the study. They were randomly assigned to one of the three arms of the study. Preliminary data suggest that actually the Action Observation Treatment has the power to boos rehabilitation when matched with a traditional treatment. Furthermore, the 3D video stimulation seems to have a higher impact on cognitive and physical variables, thus suggesting that the use of 3D stimulation may constitute a cognitive tool to be used in hospital settings, while 2D videos might be considered an at-home tool to be used autonomously to maintain and further boost outcomes

The ethics of digital well-being: a thematic review

This article presents the first thematic review of the literature on the ethical issues concerning digital well-being. The term ‘digital well-being’ is used to refer to the impact of digital technologies on what it means to live a life that is good for a human being, and review the existing literature on the ethics of digital well-being, with the goal of mapping the current debate and identifying open questions for future research. The review identifies key issues related to four key social domains: healthcare, education, governance and social development, and media and entertainment. It also highlights three broader themes: positive computing, personalised human- computer interaction, and autonomy and self-determination. The review argues that three themes will be central to ongoing discussions and research by showing how they can be used to identify open questions related to the ethics of digital well-being