Motiv’handed, a new gamified approach for home-based hand rehabilitation for post-stroke hemiparetic patients

Abstract

This document summarizes a master thesis project trying to bring a new solution to hemiplegia rehabilitation, one of the numerous consequences of strokes. A hemiplegic patients observe paralysis on one side of their body, and as so, loses autonomy and their quality of life decreases. In this study, we decided to only focus on the hand rehabilitation aspect. However, there is a clear tendency in stroke patients to stop training regularly when returning home from the hospital and the first part of their rehabilitation is over. They often experience demotivation, having the feeling that they will never get back to a fully autonomous person ever again and tend to put their training aside, especially when they do not see clear and visible results anymore. This is also due to the supervised training becoming sparser. All of this results in patients stagnating or even worse, regressing. Thus, we decided to offer a motivating solution for hand rehabilitation at home through gamification.