Improving Patient Motivation Towards Physical Rehabilitation Treatments with PlayTherapy Exergame.

A key problem in physical rehabilitation treatments is patient motivation since those treatments involve slow, repetitive, and often painful movements. Consequently, little progress may be achieved after a session, leading to longer or even uncompleted treatments. In this paper, PlayTherapy a platform to assist physical rehabilitation treatments is described. PlayTherapy is composed of two main components: (i) a rehabilitation digital exergame, consisting of a set of movement based and interactive mini-games; (ii) an information management system that keeps patient personal progress. Both components were developed in collaboration with a group of physiotherapists. Additionally, a User Experience (UX) evaluation, involving a group of physiotherapists and patients, is presented. This evaluation showed that the inclusion of PlayTherapy in physical rehabilitation treatments may increase patient motivation.