Researched and designed by Physical Therapists for Physical Therapists, Therapy Gaming provides a clinical decision-making tool for busy clinicians who want to incorporate the Wii Fit or Xbox Kinect into their patients plans of care. The app provides analysis of the task requirements of over 30 commercially available games, providing quick access to the information PTs need in order to find the right game for their patients skill level.
Games for the Xbox Kinect and Wii have been organized by task and their difficulty described using modified Gentile’s Taxonomy of Tasks terminology. The goal is to help the clinician quickly match game difficulty with their patient’s current task performance.
• Is the body (base of support) stable or in motion?
• Does the game require upper extremity and/or lower extremity virtual object manipulation?
• Is the game externally paced or self-paced? Will the game wait while the patient decides what to do or continue regardless of patient performance?
• Is there variability in the game or is the patient repeating the same task the same way?
Lead app developer Erik Trentrock, PT, DPT, NCS is a physical therapist specializing in pediatric and adult neuro-rehabilitation. His clinical interests include researching and incorporating emerging technologies into the rehab process to maximize patient motivation, functional outcomes and quality of life.