I-Corps: An immersive virtual reality platform for remote physical therapy and monitoring

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一个用于远程物理治疗和监测的智能沉浸式虚拟现实平台。该项目的核心技术检查生物力学分析，以促进远程医疗无论是在诊所和病人的家里使用头戴式显示器和手跟踪器。这提供了一种使用远程虚拟平台进行住院患者成功指标和全身虚拟指导的方法。这样的技术可能有能力为患者和治疗师等提供更高的物理治疗的可负担性、可访问性和准确性。通过虚拟环境中的远程访问和自动化的身体健康记录，患者吞吐量可能会增加一倍。此外，还可以针对“医疗沙漠”中的边缘化社区，在这些社区，病人护理受到医院能力、实际距离、人均医生数和成本的严重限制。通过远程工具和预测性物理治疗分析，无论社会经济和人口背景如何，都会有更多的人获得治疗。这项技术可以减少医院的访问，使治疗诊所在庇护期间保持开放，降低患者和诊所的成本，并提前开始检测运动需求，以管理每个用户的恢复速度。这个I-Corps项目是基于开发一个沉浸式虚拟现实环境，用于游戏化康复。该体验提供了一种远程媒介，用于在规定的锻炼期间监测用户的疼痛、不适、移动性和生物特征。试点研究已经开发出人工智能算法的集成，用于沉浸式虚拟现实中的运动预测运行时分析，以及结合生物反馈（脑波，心率，皮肤电反应）和软可穿戴机器人（力辅助电缆驱动套装）用于评估虚拟运动游戏。 此外，还与圣克鲁斯（加州）的当地医疗保健组织进行了研究，以评估该技术通过商用头戴式显示器虚拟现实（VR）系统提供患者成功指标和锻炼互动。这项技术有可能通过显着降低传统的临床和保险成本，使低社会经济背景的人群能够远程访问，减轻患者的不适，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估，被认为值得支持。影响审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of an intelligent immersive virtual reality platform for remote physical therapy and monitoring. The project's core technology examines biomechanical analysis to facilitate telemedicine both in the clinic and at the patient's home using a head-mounted display and hand trackers. This provides a means for in-patient success metrics and full-body virtual guidance using a remote virtual platform. Such technology may have the ability to enable greater affordability, accessibility, and accuracy of physical therapy for patients and therapists alike. Patient throughput potentially could be doubled through remote visits in virtual environments and automated physical health documentation. In addition, it is possible to target marginalized communities in "medical deserts," where patient care is significantly limited by hospital capacity, physical distance, doctors per population, and cost. With remote tools and predictive physical therapy analytics, more individuals will receive access to treatment regardless of socio-economic and demographic background. This technology could lower hospital visits, enable therapy clinics to remain open during shelter-in-place periods, decrease cost for patients and clinics alike, and begin detecting exercise needs earlier to manage the pace of recovery by each user.This I-Corps project is based on the development of an immersive virtual reality environment for gamified rehabilitation. The experience provides a remote medium to monitor user pain, discomfort, mobility, and biometrics during a prescribed exercise session. Pilot research has developed the integration of artificial intelligence algorithms towards predictive runtime analytics for exercise in immersive virtual reality, as well as incorporating biofeedback (brainwave, heart rate, galvanic skin response) and soft wearable robotics (force assistive cable-driven suits) for evaluating virtual exercise games. In addition, research was performed with local healthcare organizations in Santa Cruz, California, to assess this technology towards providing patient success metrics and exercise interaction through commercial head-mounted display virtual reality (VR) systems. This technology has the potential to positively change a consumer's physical therapy experience by significantly reducing traditional clinical and insurance costs, enabling remote access for populations of low-socioeconomic backgrounds, alleviating discomfort for patients, and increasing remote recovery insights tenfold.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.