Incorporating the Rehabilitation of Parkinson’s Disease in the Play for Health Platform Using a Body Area Network

Abstract

Play for Health (P4H) is an open and extensible telerehabilitation platform. It allows patients to perform rehabilitation exercises through a variety of videogames and interaction methods. Here, we extend P4H to address the training needs of patients with Parkinson’s disease. We integrate a network of on-body inertial measurement units. This allows new motion-based interactions in serious games at home, and it is a cornerstone extension allowing P4H to now also assess the patient’s movements in daily life. We introduce three new serious games in a virtual world on this platform. The game objectives are designed to be engaging, with automatically adapting challenge levels, and they realize motor-cognitive exercises according to specific therapeutic goals. We present the architecture and technical implementation of this system, including specifics in handling a large number of wireless Bluetooth sensors. We outline the scalability of the platform architecture to eventually handle other pathologies and discuss future technical improvements.