Creation of Physiatric Exercises for Remote Use in Rehabilitation Exergames

The current demographic ageing in Europe is the result of a relevant economic, social, and medical development. Nevertheless, at the same time, it is also leading to a significant increase in the demand for long-term care (LTC), especially for seniors. One viable way to offer qualified cares at home, while at the same time containing costs, is to exploit digital technologies as enablers of a constant interaction between seniors and assisting personnel. In particular, (video) games have already been identified as a viable way to foster motivation and engagement in the long term. While technical solutions to provide at home LTC has already been proposed, the scientific community is still working on general methodologies to streamline the process on the caretaker’s side. In this paper, we focus on a software application to design and propose physiatric exercises from a remote location. These exercises can be extremely tailored on the requirements of each patient and can be monitored in an automated way exploiting off-the-shelf gaming technologies such as Microsoft Kinect. The proposed solution aims to shorten the feedback loop between patient and caretaker in order to increase the quality of the therapy and improve the recovery time.