A Playful Exergame Training Intervention
Trials in Multiple Sclerosis Patients
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system and is the most common cause of neurological disabilities in young adults. MS patients suffer from a wide range of physical and cognitive dysfunctions, e.g. muscle weakness and fatigue. Besides the quality of life, these impairments also affect health care costs. Thus, an overall need exists to counteract these physical and cognitive deconditioning. Promising approaches that concurrently train motor and cognitive functions are so-called exergames. Exergames combine physical exercising and gaming. Previous studies indicate that exergames have positive effects in MS patients. However, the used exergames were not specifically designed for MS patients. Thus, a gap persists for both, specific user-centered development of exergames as well as for studies investigating its usability, feasibility and efficacy. Within the previous pilot project, the partners developed three usable and feasible user-centered exergames for the Dividat Senso platform. The conducted evaluation already showed beneficial effects for therapy experience and training performance, great acceptance and underlined a high interest and request of MS patients and therapists for such user-centered exergames. Besides the general proof of concept of the newly developed exergames in MS-specific movement therapy, the studies revealed a need for further development and system extension stated by both, MS therapists and patients. In the previous exergame set-up, there was a clear demand for the additional integration of wheelchair usage, assessment systems and upper extremity movements as well as the evaluation of the system extensions (pilot RCT). This determines the direction of the R&D work that we are conducting in this follow-up project.
