Research project: Motivating Mobility: Interactive Systems to promote Physical Activity and Leisure for people with limited mobility - Dormant - Dormant

This project directly addresses a number of key research questions:

• How do we best personalise approaches and treatments to the needs of individuals?
• What is the most appropriate content to engage and motivate people?
• Which arrangement of sensing and communication technologies is most acceptable and useful?
• How do we best assess effectiveness of the approach?
• How might we scale up this approach across the healthcare system?

Technology is becoming widely accepted in stroke rehabilitation. The advantages are that it enables more efficient use of therapy time, enables rehabilitation to continue outside the hospital environment and can be more engaging and motivating for patients.

Current technologies have not however addressed the specific needs of patients, taking into account not only their clinical requirements but also their personal preferences which may depend on their hobbies and interests as well as on their personal circumstances – the space available in their house for instance and whether they have support from a carer. The objective of this project are to co-design personalised rehabilitation

• The identification and design in partnership with users of practical technological arrangements to support fun, games
  and real-world leisure activities that promotes and motivates therapeutic activity that are acceptable to them and meet the
  needs of those with mobility issues..
• The development of engaging and stimulating content that both promotes therapeutic activity that will enhance recovery
  or maintenance of motor/cognitive skills and is fun to use in a way that is relevant to people and their particular condition
  and makes sense to all those involved.
• The identification and assessment of the clinical benefits and accessibility of this approach in real world settings that
  outlines the potential advantages and pitfalls of this approach for the care community.

• The development of a strategy to allow this form of treatment to be scaled up in order that it might be more widely used
  that identifies issues of cost, training and deployment needed to scale up this approach.

Project team

Dr Ann-Marie Hughes, Professor Jane Burridge

Project funder

EPSRC