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

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发用于远程物理治疗和监测的智能沉浸式虚拟现实平台。该项目的核心技术是通过生物力学分析，利用头戴式显示器和手部追踪器，促进诊所和患者家中的远程医疗。这为使用远程虚拟平台的住院患者成功度量和全身虚拟指导提供了一种手段。这种技术可能有能力为患者和治疗师提供更实惠、更容易获得和更准确的物理治疗。通过虚拟环境中的远程访问和自动化的身体健康记录，患者的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，患者护理受到医院容量、物理距离、人均医生数量和成本的严重限制。有了远程工具和预测物理治疗分析，更多的人将获得治疗，而不考虑社会经济和人口背景。这项技术可以降低医院就诊次数，使治疗诊所在避难所期间保持开放，降低患者和诊所的成本，并开始更早地检测锻炼需求，以管理每个用户的恢复速度。这个I-Corps项目是基于游戏化康复的沉浸式虚拟现实环境的开发。这种体验提供了一种远程媒介，在规定的锻炼过程中监测用户的疼痛、不适、活动和生物特征。试点研究已经将人工智能算法集成到沉浸式虚拟现实运动的预测运行时分析中，并将生物反馈（脑电波、心率、皮肤电反应）和软可穿戴机器人（力辅助电缆驱动套装）结合在一起，用于评估虚拟运动游戏。此外，研究人员还与加利福尼亚州Santa Cruz的当地医疗机构合作，通过商业头戴式虚拟现实（VR）系统评估该技术对患者成功指标和锻炼互动的影响。这项技术有可能通过显著降低传统的临床和保险成本，为低社会经济背景的人群提供远程访问，减轻患者的不适，并将远程康复的洞察力提高十倍，从而积极改变消费者的物理治疗体验。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.