Patient Experience in Adjunct Controller-Free Hand Tracking Virtual Reality Tasks for Upper-Limb Occupational Therapy Rehabilitation

Andrea Mc Kittrick; Mathilde R Desselle; Antonio Padilha Lanari Bo; Bianca Zhang; Sue Laracy; Giovanna Tornatore

doi:10.1177/23743735231211983

Patient Experience in Adjunct Controller-Free Hand Tracking Virtual Reality Tasks for Upper-Limb Occupational Therapy Rehabilitation

J Patient Exp. 2023 Nov 6:10:23743735231211983. doi: 10.1177/23743735231211983. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Andrea Mc Kittrick¹, Mathilde R Desselle², Antonio Padilha Lanari Bo³, Bianca Zhang³, Sue Laracy¹, Giovanna Tornatore⁴

Affiliations

¹ Occupational Therapy Department, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Herston, QLD, Australia.
² Herston Biofabrication Institute, Metro North Health, Herston, QLD, Australia.
³ Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia.
⁴ Occupational Therapy Department, Surgical Treatment and Rehabilitation Service, Herston, QLD, Australia.

Abstract

Benefits of immersive virtual reality rehabilitation (VRR) include increased motivation and improved transfer of skills to real-world tasks. The introduction of Oculus hand-tracking technology allowed for the development of VRR games that do not need virtual reality (VR) hand controllers. This is beneficial as participants with upper limb impairments/injuries may have difficulties with/be limited in using/manipulating VR hand controllers. In this project, a VRR game was developed and evaluated. The aim of this study was to determine patient experience when using VRR as an adjunct to upper-limb rehabilitation. N = 20 participants receiving upper limb rehabilitation completed a series of VRR tasks by playing the "smoothie bar" VRR game. After the completion of the VRR tasks, the participant experience was evaluated via a study-specific questionnaire. Key findings include 95% agreement that VRR tasks were fun and engaging and 75% agreed that VR tasks will be helpful to include in their rehabilitation. Hands-tracking VRR has a high potential to be used as an adjunct intervention in upper limb rehabilitation.

Keywords: hands-free; occupational therapy; rehabilitation; upper limb; virtual reality.