Liberating housebound obese individuals using augmented virtual reality

到2050年，超重和肥胖导致的NHS费用预计将翻一番，达到每年100亿英镑，而社会和商业的更广泛成本估计将达到每年近500亿英镑。NICE的指导方针指出，肥胖治疗需要包括增加人们的身体活动水平、改善饮食行为和减少能量摄入的策略。生活方式指导课程，包括教育和体育活动，经常在当地社区中心和学校向团体提供。然而，一些受影响最严重的社会成员无法以成本效益获得这些改变生活的治疗，因为他们发现旅行困难或不可能。所以在这里，我们建议使用“在野外”部署的技术来帮助特定群体的肥胖个体：有学习障碍的人，有焦虑或抑郁等心理问题的人，让他们呆在家里，以及其他由于身体状况而功能受限的人。我们知道，让超重和肥胖的人参加适度的体育活动会有很多好处。在这个群体中，即使是很小的改善也能极大地提高他们的幸福感和个人健康，所以我们的目标之一就是看看我们能对个人参与日常活动的能力产生多大的影响。虚拟世界是实时的、在线的、交互式的三维环境，用户通过个性化的化身使用语音或文本进行交互。从家里访问，所需要的只是一台现代电脑和互联网连接。主要出于社会原因，医疗保健从业者越来越多地利用虚拟世界进行团队培训、会议、患者支持小组和协作团队工作。我们在伦敦帝国理工学院的小组目前正在与帝国理工学院医疗保健NHS信托和MoreLife（一个为肥胖和超重儿童和成人提供减肥干预的供应商）合作，提供虚拟世界的减肥小组指导。我们的官方项目合作伙伴MoreLife通过互联网提供了一个为期12周的教育项目，参与者以虚拟身份参加，不需要旅行，也不需要在公共场合暴露真实的自己。在这些小组中，他们了解了食物摄入和营养，并被鼓励参加更多的体育活动和锻炼。虚拟世界试点项目的幻灯片可以在这里看到：http://tinyurl.com/healthrez.Here我们建议更进一步，通过使用微软Kinect传感器，使居家的个人能够参加小组会议，包括特别设计的帮助他们改变生活的体育活动。Kinect是一种由微软开发的动作感应输入设备，最初是为Xbox视频游戏机开发的，最近是为Windows PC开发的。结合深度传感网络摄像头，它可以直接捕捉用户的动作，并将其传输到互联网上，在那里他们的化身会反映出这些动作，而不需要任何人看到真人的视频图像。这里有一个电影演示：http://tinyurl.com/healthrezk。我们的潜在用户，他们的护理人员和我们合作伙伴的教练对这个项目非常热情，我们希望通过部署这种极具成本效益和可扩展的数字技术，我们可以改善这个弱势群体的健康和福祉，从而为他们提供以前被剥夺的生活机会。我们已经在之前的研究中表明，虚拟世界可以用来为有学习障碍的人提供卫生保健相关信息，我们将继续与布莱顿的Grace Eyre基金会和其他慈善基金会合作。

The NHS costs attributable to overweight and obesity are projected to double to £10 billion per year by 2050, and the wider costs to society and business are estimated to reach almost £50 billion per year. NICE guidelines state that obesity treatment needs to include strategies to increase people's physical activity levels, improve eating behaviour and reduce energy intake. Lifestyle coaching sessions including education and physical activities are often delivered to groups in local community centres and schools. However, some of the most severely affected members of society do not have cost-effective access to these life-changing treatments because they find travel difficult or impossible. So here we propose to use technology deployed 'in the wild' to help specific groups of housebound obese individuals: people with learning disability or with psychological problems such as anxiety or depression that keep them at home and others who are functionally limited because of their physical condition. We know that there is much to be gained from engaging overweight and obese individuals in moderate physical activity. Even small improvements in this group could greatly enhance their wellbeing and personal health so one of our goals will be to see how much impact we can make on an individual's ability to engage in everyday activities.Virtual worlds are live, online, interactive 3-dimensional environments in which users interact using speech or text via a personalised avatar. Accessible from home all that is required is a modern computer and internet connection. Primarily used for social reasons, healthcare practitioners are increasingly utilising virtual worlds for team training, conferences, patient support groups and collaborative team-working.Our group at Imperial College London is currently working with the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and MoreLife (a provider of weight loss interventions for obese and overweight children and adults) to provide virtual world group coaching for weightloss. MoreLife, our official project partner, delivers a 12-week educational programme across the internet, where participants attend as avatars and do not have to travel, or expose their real selves in public. In these groups they learn about food intake and nutrition, and are encouraged to engage in more physical activity and exercise. A slideshow illustrating the virtual world pilot project can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/healthrez.Here we propose to take this several steps further by using the Microsoft Kinect Sensor to enable housebound individuals to attend group sessions incorporating physical activities specially designed to help them transform their lives. The Kinect is a motion sensing input device developed by Microsoft initially for the Xbox video game console and more recently for the Windows PC. Incorporating depth-sensing webcams, it can directly capture the user's movements and transmit them across the internet where they are mirrored by their avatars, without the need for anyone to see a video image of the real person. A movie demonstration is available here: http://tinyurl.com/healthrezk. Our potential users, their carers and our partners' instructors are very enthusiastic about this project and we hope to show that by deploying this extremely cost-effective and scalable digital technology we can improve this disadvantaged group's health and wellbeing and thereby provide them with life opportunities previously denied them. We have already shown in a previous study that virtual worlds can be used to provide health care-related information to people with learning disability, and we will continue this work with the Grace Eyre Foundation in Brighton and with other charitable foundations.