Abstract
Objectives: As our society is ageing and the elderly face loss of autonomy due to falls, rehabilitation and fall prevention in seniors has become one of the global healthcare priorities. The proposed platform (KINOPTIM) addresses the technical challenges and demands of an integrated tele-rehabilitation system through an innovative game engine. Approach: KINOPTIM is based on three interconnected systems: a tele-monitoring subsystem (TM), a Rehabilitation and Gaming subsystem (RG) and the Medical Business Intelligence (MBI) subsystem. TM is responsible to collect the required data and process them by a threshold detection algorithm so as to evaluate the fall risk level. RG is the core of the proposed platform bearing the primary duty of providing individually tailored fun rehabilitation/training programs. These programs are games based on balance /coordination, gait, strength and flexibility exercises, enhanced by relaxing graphics, backgrounds, sound and music. Moreover each game’s score relates to user performance according to their motion during the gaming sessions. Finally, the KINOPTIM platform provides an intelligent system (MBI), able to act both as repository and as a self-learning system, assisting physicians to design more efficient rehabilitation plans. Results & Conclusion: KINOPTIM is a tele-rehabilitation gaming platform for fall prevention in the elderly community. It embraces among others an entertaining physical training program implemented in a game format based on personalised information. Furthermore, it offers some further functionality for the cares in order to help them to plan the most appropriate rehabilitation strategy and to monitor patients’ performance during games’ sessions.