Wiihabilitation
The emerging potential for enhancing rehabilitative care delivery with the use of various types of technology is one of the most happening things in Rehabilitation therapy.
One exciting tool is the use of video game systems to address a number of deficit areas, including, but not limited to: balance disorders, cognitive impairments, motor planning deficits, and activity tolerance limitations..
The Nintendo Wii game system is one the examples of technology integration with Rehabilitation. Wii gets Patients moving, and it is something that is interacting with them; they don’t realize they are doing therapy Various Wii activities such as Bowling, Baseball, Golf, tennis, Boxing help enhance different deficit areas for different rehabilitation fields.
1.Physical therapy benefits from Wii including but not limited to ROM or Strength Deficit , Activity Tolerance Impairment , Motor Planning, Motor Control, or Coordination Deficit, Balance Disorder. Some rehabilitation specialists use Wii® games to mimic and reinforce many of the movements used in traditional rehabilitation.
2.Occupational Therapy benefits from Wii are listed as follows- Motor Planning, Coordination Deficit, Visual-Perceptual Motor Deficit, and Cognitive Deficit
3.Speech Therapy benefits from Wii are as follows-Cognitive Communication Deficits (Attention/Sequencing/Immediate and STM, problem solving, abstract reasoning Deficits in receptive/expressive language, intelligibility, fluency, voice, auditory processing
Using Wii with kids is useful as kids don't see using the Wii as therapy. Since they have a shorter attention span, rehabilitation with kids has to incorporate play into therapy. If it’s not fun to them and they don’t know why they are doing it, they won’t do it. With the Wii they can see how good they do and it gets them excited.
The Wii Fit bandwagon rolls on...
