Physiofun - Engineering for Life

Exercises and advice are an integral part of physiotherapy practice. To maximise the effect of physiotherapy intervention, patients are commonly given exercise programmes to undertake at home. The increasing emphasis on self-management of health conditions requires the patient to adhere to the exercise programme prescribed. Some attempt has been made to make the written exercise sheets more appealing to children but generally they consist of outline diagrams of the exercises along-side an explanation and the number of repetitions required. The aim of this project is to investigate the potential for technology to support and encourage the compliance of children with home-based physiotherapy exercises. These images are the first designs for a proposed game and physiotherapy exercise video. The child would be able to personalise the avatar and the ‘fox’ and ‘wolf’ designs are intended to cover two age ranges. The games designs themselves off simple tasks of a creative nature with an option of a range of difficulties all of which could be programmed with specific motor task ranging from large actions to those requiring fine motor skills and placement accuracy.