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Arnold School part of $2 million national program testing game technology’s impact on health

Submitted by: John Warner on Jun 10, 2008 at 6:40 am Tagged with: Health Care, health services Source: University of South Carolina

Popular game technology will be tested at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health to help stroke victims improve their balance and recover motor skills.

Dr. Stacy Fritz, a clinical assistant professor at the Arnold School, is receiving $112,000 of $2 million in funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for 12 different research projects around the nation. The foundation’s grants are through its Health Games Research Program, headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The university will use Wii by Nintendo and EyeToy by PlayStation 2 as a way to determine whether stroke victims, who have received traditional rehabilitation and therapy, can improve mobility, walking and balance and overcome their fear of falling, said Fritz.

Thirty stroke-disabled participants who have had traditional care and rehabilitation will be recruited for the study. Participants will meet four times a week for one hour each session over a five-week period.

“The goal of this study is to determine if video games can be useful to improve balance and mobility for someone who has had a stroke and is no longer receiving physical therapy,” Fritz said. “The use of video games is meant to serve as an adjunct to therapy, not a replacement for skilled therapy.”

The study will identify new, interactive strategies to use in the design of future health games and technologies, said Dr. Debra Lieberman, Health Games Research director and a communication researcher at the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Together, the 12 studies funded in this round will help us better understand how people respond to various types of health games, and this will potentially lead to new game-based applications that can more effectively engage and motivate players to improve their health,” Lieberman said. For more information about the trial, call the University of South Carolina’s Rehabilitation Laboratory at 803-777-2627, or visit http://sph.sc.edu/dpt/dpt-rehab/.