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

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/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检查生物力学分析，以便于在诊所和患者家中使用头盔显示器和手部跟踪器进行远程医疗。这为使用远程虚拟平台的住院患者成功指标和全身虚拟指导提供了一种手段。这种技术可能具有使患者和治疗师能够更负担得起、更容易获得和更准确地进行物理治疗的能力。通过虚拟环境中的远程访问和自动化的身体健康文档，患者吞吐量可能会翻一番。此外，还有可能以“医疗沙漠”中的边缘化社区为目标，那里的病人护理受到医院容量、实际距离、每人口医生数和费用的严重限制。有了远程工具和预测性物理治疗分析，更多的人将获得治疗，而不考虑社会经济和人口背景。这项技术可以减少住院次数，使治疗诊所在就地避难所期间保持开放，降低患者和诊所的成本，并更早开始检测运动需求，以管理每个用户的恢复速度。这个i-Corps项目基于为游戏化康复开发的沉浸式虚拟现实环境。该体验提供了一种远程媒介，可在规定的运动期间监控用户的疼痛、不适、活动能力和生物特征。试点研究已经开发了人工智能算法的集成，用于在沉浸式虚拟现实中进行锻炼的预测运行时分析，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(力量辅助缆绳驱动的套装)来评估虚拟锻炼游戏。此外，还与加利福尼亚州圣克鲁斯的当地医疗机构进行了研究，以评估这项技术通过商业头盔显示虚拟现实(VR)系统提供患者成功指标和运动互动的能力。这项技术具有积极改变消费者物理治疗体验的潜力，它显著降低了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，缓解了患者的不适，并增加了十倍的远程恢复洞察力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.