VirtualRehab has just exceeded 10,000 games sessions and 1000 hours of game played by the patients who are currently using it, including those suffering from Neurodegenerative diseases and Neuromuscular and Neurovascular disorders.
This milestone is a major achievement for Virtualware in its aim to make VirtualRehab a normal part of the rehabilitation process in clinics and hospitals around the world. David Fried, the Director of International Business Development and Julio Alvarez, the Director of the Health Business Unit in Virtualware, discussed their views on the importance of these latest results, and the future of VirtualRehab.
Julio Alvarez – “I think one of the most important factors in the growth of VirtualRehab in the past year or so has been our constant commitment to developing a really robust solution that assures a great user experience and our focus on making sure physiotherapists have a tool that can be seamlessly integrated into the therapy process. The result is that adding VirtualRehab into a clinic’s day to day therapy activities isn’t difficult, and the result is it’s being used more and more by patients.”
David Fried – “We also have a great commercial and technical team that assure the best customer experience, and our pricing is very competitive too, which always helps as well!”
JA – “There’s a general consensus among physiotherapists that the more a patient can perform focussed therapy exercises, the better their results will be. The problem in general is that most people can’t make it to a physiotherapy clinic with the frequency that is required to get the most out of their therapy, either because of their schedules don’t permit it or because of the cost. Telerehab resolves both of those problems, as it allows the patient to perform customized and controlled physiotherapy exercises in the comfort of their own home and when it best suits their schedule and the cost savings is significant. “
DF – “VirtualRehab is prepared to provide such Telerehabilitation services through the Microsoft cloud platform we have set up, remotely linking patients with physiotherapists. We expect that in the next few years we’ll see a marked increase in this type of service from physiotherapists, especially for elderly patients.”
JA – “Several. First of all, VirtualRehab has the CE mark for Medical Devices, making it the first Virtual therapy system of its kind in Europe to have it. This allows hospitals and clinics to incorporate it into their therapy process with all the guarantees required.
Secondly, VirtualRehab is a product that is constantly evolving thanks to our close relationships with leading neurologists and physiotherapists. Having installations in places like the Neurorehabiliation unit of the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery in London, as well as the Centre of Comprehensive Neurological Care in Pamplona Spain really helps us get important clinical feedback to improve the solution.
Thirdly, I’d say our experience. VirtualRehab has been available commercially internationally for the past two years, and the numbers show the growth it has experienced, especially in smaller clinics. This gives us important feedback as well in terms of patient responses to VirtualRehab, as well as the opinions of the physiotherapists who use it to treat their patients.
Finally, we’re working to make VirtualRehab a multidevice platform, to assure that we can be involved in all the different stages of a patient’s recovery process.”
JA – “The response has been incredibly positive from both parts. Patients enjoy using it as it makes their therapy more enjoyable, and the fact that they have clear goals set out for them in the games assures that they are motivated, which means better adherence leading to better patient outcomes.
Therapists like it as we made that the Program Manager used to set up the therapies, customize the games and track the patients’ results is really simple to use. The fact that it gives them objective data from patients’ sessions means that they have a much clearer idea of their progress, and can tweak the therapies at any moment.
DF – “The higher resolution of the Kinect 2 camera means improved tracking capability and accuracy. It can track more joints of the body combined with a faster response time making it more precise in tracking the skeleton.
The wider angle of vision means the user can now be closer to the Kinect which means less space is required in the setup, which is important especially for Telerehabilitation purposes.
The new Kinect can also track up to 6 persons at the same time versus 2 of the old version, which opens up the possibility of multiplayer activities.”
DF- “We’re very interested in continuing to develop innovative healthtech solutions, and we have some interesting projects underway. We’ve already begun to develop an interactive therapy solution for persons showing early signs of dementia, which we’re working on together with clinicians and researchers from the Institute of Neurology and the Department of Computer Science of the University College of London.
We’ve also developed training solutions for healthcare personnel, including VirtualTriage, VirtualCPR and a Surgical Checklist application that helps test medical surgery personnel on their knowledge of the protocols that have been laid out by the WHO to avoid unnecessary deaths or injuries during surgery. So healthcare is becoming increasingly more important in our corporate strategy moving into 2015.”
We here at Virtualware would like to thanks all of the organizations, professionals and wonderful patients who have used VirtualRehab up to now, and who have helped us to constantly strive to deliver a solution that will improve the quality of life for many people around the world.