Virtual Reality and Serious Games in Healthcare

This chapter discusses the applications and solutions of emerging Virtual Reality (VR) and video games technologies in the healthcare sector, e.g. physical therapy for motor rehabilitation, exposure therapy for psychological phobias, and pain relief. Section 2 reviews state-of-the-art interactive devices used in current VR systems and high-end games such as sensor-based and camera-based tracking devices, data gloves, and haptic force feedback devices. Section 3 investigates recent advances and key concepts in games technology, including dynamic simulation, flow theory, adaptive games, and their possible implementation in serious games for healthcare. Various serious games are described in this section: some were designed and developed for specific healthcare purposes, e.g. BreakAway (2009)’s Free Dive, HopeLab (2006)’s Re-Mission, and Ma et al. (2007)’s VR game series, others were utilising off-the-shelf games such as Nintendo Wii sports for physiotherapy. A couple of experiments of using VR systems and games for stroke rehabilitation are highlighted in section 4 as examples to showcase the benefits and impacts of these technologies to conventional clinic practice. Finally, section 5 points some future directions of applying emerging games technologies in healthcare, such as augmented reality, Wii-mote motion control system, and even full body motion capture and controller free games technology demonstrated recently on E3 2009 which have great potentials to treat motor disorders, combat obesity, and other healthcare applications

Virtual Reality as a Tool for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: A Review.

This chapter describes the deployment of Virtual Reality (VR) for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to treat anxiety and other psychological disorders. Regarding anxiety, the most common technique is constituted of Exposure Therapy that, transposed to Virtual Reality, allows the patient to face a digital version of the feared object or situation, instead of a real or imaginal one. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) has proved effective in the treatment of anxiety disorders such as social phobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and panic disorder with agoraphobia and has shown an efficacy comparable to traditional in-vivo exposure with various specific phobias such as arachnophobia, acrophobia, and fear of flying. Thanks to its versatility, VR has also found an employment within the CBT framework with other psychological disorders, such as substance abuse, eating disorders, and in inducing non-pharmacological analgesia in patients undergoing painful medical procedures. Even when VR-based therapy does not lead to better results than traditional CBT in terms of efficacy, there are several reasons for preferring it over in-vivo exposure, including patient\u2019s comfort and safety, as well as the possibility to create complex or delicate scenarios (e.g. PTSD scenarios). In addition, VRET can be employed to facilitate the transition toward fearful objects in the real world in patients who would otherwise refuse to face real stimuli