Exploring Serious Games Within the Physio and Ergotherapeutic Usage: Insights into Their Acceptance Based on Actual Applications

Abstract

Classic rehabilitation faces different challenges, such as low patient engagement, limited motivation, or difficulties in personalizing the therapy, which is needed for good recovery outcomes. Serious games present a promising solution to these problems by enhancing the individual motivation and deliver interactive rehabilitation possibilities. To investigate their potential, a preliminary study was conducted using an online questionnaire as the methodological approach. Overall, 15 therapists (average age: 33.1 years; average experience: 9.7 years) from various professional backgrounds participated in it. The results showed that seven therapists (47%) already used serious games within patient rehabilitation, while eight (53%) had not yet used them. Most of the already used solutions also only cover cognitive rehabilitation and do not use any additional sensors to capture movements. Only within 2 cases serious games were also used at home in addition to the therapeutical setting. In addition, the participants also evaluated five serious games integrated into a rehabilitation platform, highlighting strengths such as increased patient motivation and adaptability, but also missing features like tailored feedback systems and the need for improved integration into their daily workflows. According to the discussion, these findings suggest that serious games in rehabilitation are not yet broadly in real use. There is also the need for better accessibility, functionality, time and therapist training to optimize the use of serious games and address some current limitations in rehabilitation practices.