Physiological Monitoring During Augmented Reality Exercise Confirms Advantages to Health and Well-Being

Flexible Augmented Reality-Based Health Solution for Medication Weight Establishment

The trend of personalized medicine and the increasing flexibility of drug dosage relevant goals of the 21st century represent the foundation for the current research. To obtain doses smaller than the smallest available, physicians frequently write prescriptions for children and adults, without preserving the integrity of the pill. Moreover, patients purchase large amounts of medication for cost-saving reasons. To support the correct administration of the remedies and the partial alignment to the personalized treatment trend, this paper proposes a flexible and user-friendly solution for determining the medication quantity given to patients, using augmented reality and optical character recognition algorithm capabilities. Via the MATLAB development environment and a Logitech HD Pro C920 webcam, the results were 80% correct in identifying the cutting position of the pill, by means of the Hough transform, and 30% correct in weight recognition exploitation using an optical character recognition (OCR) algorithm. In future work, a higher resolution camera and a more powerful computer can be used to increase the percentages mentioned above. In addition, a 3D scan of the pill fragmentation, combined with the weight recognition functionality, could increase the accuracy of the splitting procedure, conducted by the patient or the patient caretaker.

Leveraging technology to move more and sit less

One of the major changes in the updated physical activity (PA) guidelines is the recommendation for adults to simply move more and sit less throughout the day. This recommendation comes during a time of proliferation and advancement of personal health technologies that allow adults greater access to interventions to increase PA. Wearable activity monitors provide direct feedback of activity levels allowing users to reach PA targets throughout the day. Gamification of these and other devices can engage users and sustain their motivation to increase PA, along with the formation of social networks through social media platforms. This review will discuss and present an overview of current technologies that can be leveraged to increase PA in adults. Specific attention will be paid to wearable activity monitors, gamification and social network platforms that can help adults increase and sustain their PA levels to improve their overall health.

Virtual reality in pain therapy: a requirements analysis for older adults with chronic back pain

BACKGROUND

Today immersive environments such as Virtual Reality (VR) offer new opportunities for serious gaming in exercise therapy and psychoeducation. Chronic back pain (CBP) patients could benefit from exergames in VR. The requirements in older CBP patients for a VR pain therapy have not yet been determined in studies. The aim of the study was to perform a requirements analysis for the user group of geriatric patients with CBP for a VR exergame. The objective was to find out the expectations, desires, preferences and barriers in order to collect them as requirements for this vulnerable group and to determine frameworks of therapy by physiotherapists and psychotherapists.

METHODS

We conducted a requirements analysis through semi-structured interviews with 10 elderly participants with CBP. Furthermore, two focus groups were conducted with three physiotherapists and two psychotherapists to determine frameworks of therapy programs for the target group. The qualitative data were transcribed and examined through a structuring content analysis. Subsequently, the results of the analysis were prioritized by all participants of the study.

RESULTS

The results of the requirements analysis indicate mandatory requirements for the overall system, hardware, software and gamification elements. The key requirements were target-group-specific applications of the VR exergame through e.g. individual briefing, user-friendly handling, inclusion of movement limitations, presentation of everyday scenarios in combination with biofeedback, age-appropriate feedback through praise and awards and a maximum exercise duration of 30 min and 15 min of relaxation.

CONCLUSION

It should be possible to use the determined requirements productively to create user-friendly VR exergames that motivate elderly chronic back pain patients to perform exercises regularly.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

The study is registered in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS-ID: DRKS00015294 12.10.2018).