Monitoring Rehabilitation Progress in Patients through Augmented Reality Games and Cloud Computing

This project proposes a cloud-based framework with augmented virtual reality for the support and management of rehabilitation processes in patients. It aims to develop a feasible architecture for use in different types of rehabilitations, focusing on patient motivation and communication between patients and healthcare professionals.

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PROJECT PROPOSAL
By Name
Course
Instructor
Institution
Location
Date

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MONITORING REHABILITATION PROGRESS IN PATIENTS THROUGH AUGMENTED
REALITY GAMES AND CLOUD COMPUTING
Abstract
The main purpose of this project present a conceptual cloud-based framework with and
augmented virtual reality known as ‘CRehab’ for support and management of rehabilitation
process for the patient. From the studies that have been carried out in the past it is very clear
that b rehabilitation, staff, patients, wards and families require a system which can be able to
handle personal, administration, communication and patient motivation process effectively.
To this end ‘CRehab’ employs cloud capabilities to address the first two concerns. The
motivation of rehabilitation patients is highly encouraged by the deployment of the virtual
rehabilitation environments with the exercises which stimulates the patients.. the main aim of
the project is to develop a feasible architecture for use in different types of rehabilitations,
irrespective of the environment, patient, environment or any other factor.
Key words: Rehabilitation, virtual reality, cloud computing, rehabilitation
framework

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract............................................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Research Question, Aim/Objectives................................................................................................7
Theoretical Content/Methodology...................................................................................................7
Experimental Setting.......................................................................................................................8
Risk Analysis, Results, Outcome and Relevance............................................................................9
Project Planning and Gantt chart...................................................................................................11
Conclusions....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Clinical rehabilitation is usually conducted on a daily basis by determined patients and staff. This
research project will focus on the Augmented reality and cloud computing , and how they can
enhance the process of recovery, management and the collaborative relationship between the
patients and clinical staff. The constant improvement in technology has generated some
remarkable rehabilitation facilities ; Nevertheless, there is need for more research to be carried
out on staff communication, patient-therapist collaboration and subjective factors such as the
motivation for patients (Nguyen, 2017, p. 761).
This proposal introduces the design of the cloud –based framework to improve and simplify the
process of rehabilitation. This will be done by moving the computing resources such as reports,
patient’s data, motorizations, assessments, etc. to the cloud and through the provision of the
Augmented reality will give users appropriate interfaces to meet the needs of each
rehabilitation patient. The project contains details of how the framework will enhance the
collaboration between the patient and clinical staff through the utilization of the system to
motivate patient’s encouragements. Cloud services develop a distributive system which
makes the interaction between all the system users efficient, tis will include specialists,
patients, therapists and the families. The aim of this project is to design and improve the

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reference framework for the rehabilitation , which would then be amended for use in any
given rehabilitation settings (Jung, 2015, p. 226).
Literature review
REHABILITATION MEETS CLOUD COMPUTING
a) Rehabilitation
This proposal focuses on the development of a framework on how to improve and support the
rehabilitation process. The factors which contributes to successful patient recovery include the
patient motivation, which is very crucial and dependent on the simulation and the delivery of
the suitable data (Erickson, 2011, p. 324). The working relationship alliance between the patient
and the healthcare professional, patients recognized as highly motivated for the rehabilitation
have been found to support themselves more closely to the objectives and techniques of
rehabilitation professional, and they are expected to understand the purpose and nature of their
rehabilitation, when compared to those patients with low motivation (Adeli, 2018, p. 115).
Active contribution in partnership with the therapists, provision of data regarding to the
rehabilitation process and goal identification process has been identified as a positive
empowering and motivating factors. Hence it is very essential to enrage the patient in the
informative and communicative settings.
Studies about the rehabilitation process have shown that there is room for overall
improvement with regard to the communication and collaboration among the clinical staff and
the patients. Social workers and healthcare professional are hardly asked for their view on
the patient condition, despite the fact that they spend more with the patients than other
members of the team. It is very essential that these healthcare professionals voice their views to

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create a more operational rehabilitation process (Eddings, 2014, p. 21). The healthcare professional
plays a very crucial role in the patient care and so should be involved in the communication
flow.
A rehabilitation program is made up of a series of steps , which describes the treatment to be
applied and the variables to be amended to match with the profile of the student. A specialist
or consultant is in charge of the programed, identifies the consequences and makes decisions. For
the patients with small injuries, the patients are given exercises they can be doing at home, as a
recovery routine or preventative mechanism. A typical rehabilitations program includes;
 Initial consultation for the psychological and physical evaluation
 Creation of a customized therapeutic process
 Follow-up appointments
 Weekly sessions of the physical activities , which are supervised by a professional
from the sports medicine service to enhance body image , self-strength, stamina and
esteem.
 Final session: Delivery of the reports, making conclusions and giving recommendations.
B) Cloud computing
Cloud computing is a modern phenomenon, Cloud computing being linked to the web, the
term refers to the collection of various resources and services stored on the secure servers ,
available remotely at any given time, from anywhere and accessible instantly. The user of the
system has to access the programs and files stored in a virtual and delocalized settings thus the
name cloud. The resources are usually permanently at the disposal of the users, irrespective of
location and time. The documents are not physically held on one’s owns personal computer but

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they are usually retrieved through the internet. Working in the cloud means that the users do not
have to depend on a specific operating system, location or program any more. In order to start
working in the cloud, all that is need is a computer connected to the internet (Deng, 2017, p. 223).
C) Cloud computing applied to rehabilitation
The main benefit of the ‘Cloud Rehabilitations’ is that the data can be shared in real time and
many users can access and share the same file. A rehabilitation session can be shared between
the therapist, consultants and patients at the same time. The consultants can instantaneously
inspect the condition of the patient, view and edit rehabilitation exercises and then organize
the shared data to acquire a broader view of the process of the patient, using the information
from various sources patients can be able to access the data necessary for their exercises, from
home. All this is founded on a communicative and collaborative environment. Through the web
medical applications, the rehabilitation cloud could be able to hold all the medical records of
the patients and data about the rehabilitation process and be accessible to all those who are
involved i.e. the patient, therapist, families, healthcare professional, specialist, consultants and
social workers and could enhance and support rehabilitation (Rocha, 2012).
CREHAB FRAMEWORK
The projects that were initially reviewed mainly targeted certain problems, whereas this given
proposal offers a general solution in form of a cloud-based framework applications. Given the
heterogeneity of the rehabilitation projects, communication breakdown between the patients and
the clinical staff, and the likelihood provided by the virtual and the augmented reality, this
project focuses on the three key area (Furht, 2011, p. 334). Firstly, its targets to put together and
standardize all the rehabilitation techniques, scopes and process. Secondly, cloud services offers

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professional and clients with a robust tool to improve communication, manage relevant
information and develop trustworthy relationships, and be able to manage the available
information in a precise and timely manner. Finally the virtual and augmented reality
plugins/modulus can be deployed to patient customized environments. The system will be
quickly adapted to manage any kind of the rehabilitation therapy, through the definition of the
information based approach. Which is usually human aware and patient centered, by assisting
any member of the staff to air their opinions and share data, despite their professional level. The
aim in this case is to gather and provide as much as possible the information regarding to the
patients rehabilitation process.
Research Question, Aim/Objectives
The main aim of this project is to present a conceptual cloud-based framework with and
augmented virtual reality known as ‘CRehab’ for support and management of rehabilitation
process for the patient. With that specific objectives were set to assist in achieving the main aim
and they include;
1. To carry out a detailed state of art/ literature review in order to gain a deeper understanding
of the topic of research.
2. To carry out an experiment to find out the feasibility of the system
3. Analyzing the collected data
Research questions
1. The research will be guided with the following questions:
2. What is rehabilitation?
3. What is cloud computing?

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4. How is cloud computing applied in rehabilitation?
5. What is the framework of CRehab?
Theoretical Content/Methodology
There are many studies and many ideas that have been developed to support patient
rehabilitation by making application of customized interaction devices and augmented or virtual
reality. Generally, research has focused on how to enhance the performance of patients during
the therapy sessions through enabling enhanced interactions, designing improved virtual
environment or updating performance of the robots. Nevertheless, action on significant
subjective factors have been overlooked. Concerns that require to be addressed are enhanced
communication between those parties involved in the rehabilitation process, the availability and
transparence of information, and patients’ motivation. Patient mobility and assessment is one of
the areas that could be developed , for instance , when the patient interacts with the device ,
the therapist is not able to monitor the patient’s actions at that given time. It is very significant
to remember that one member of the clinical staff can be in charge of multiple patients, reach
of the patients having different records, hence making keeping track of all of them quite
challenge. Thus having an efficient system to monitor of all of them can be of great help
Experimental Setting
In this project, the therapist will carry out a rehabilitation process for an impaired child in a
school setting. The center where the rehabilitation will be carried out has all the required
qualified personnel for the creation and motorization of the exercise. The figure below is an
illustration of a screen where the therapist can create tables with the exercises for each patient. In
this scenario, the therapist will be creating a simple manual for daily use by a student with a
motor disability. The interface will be based on the validated working experience.

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The developed interface will allow the specialist to conduct the essential adjustments for each
patient’s sessions. The following options will be available;
 Pre-inscription; this will be the screen where the exercise sessions will be created
 Report: This will allow the generation of the progress reports. The reports will be
digitally signed in order to ensure privacy and that they fully comply with the other
medical enterprise resource planning
 Diagnostic: This section will feature the management of the complete medical diagnosis
and the profiles for each patient
 Motorization; in this section, clinical staff will consult the patient recovery records, either
the real-time or historical records.
 Resources: In this section a complete list of all the resources will be available to the staff.

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Fig: Exercise Schedule User Interface (Erickson, 2011, p. 76)
Risk Analysis, Results, Outcome and Relevance
Risk analysis
The table below is an analysis of the risks/ challenges that are likely to be encountered during the
research.
Event Risk Contingency plan
Challenging of finding
study participants
Collection of inaccurate data Use of ‘snowball’ sampling technique where a group
of people are targeted and then use then to refer
other.

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Dealing with data Poor analysis, hence inaccurate
findings
Use of modern technology of data analysis
Accounting for the biases
Getting back to the methodology
Loss of data Starting the project afresh Saving the collected data in multiple modern and
safe places such as cloud and drop box.
Choosing the right
methodology
Collecting insufficient data
Inaccurate findings
Taking time in planning about the research and
consulting from my tutor.
Discussion
This research project just like any other research project is likely to face some challenges which
include: finding out the willing participants to take part in the study, choosing the correct
research methodology, losing data in the process of research, lack of motivation during research
and coming up with the most appropriate methods to analysis the collected data to obtain the best
outcome.
Results and relevance
The outcome from the literature review and the experiments that have been carried out indicates
that participants were able to use the system effectively, all of those who took part were
compliant and followed the protocol and attended to all sessions on time. The virtual and
augmented reality plugins/modulus can be deployed to patient customized environments. The
system will be quickly adapted to manage any kind of the rehabilitation therapy, through the
definition of the information based approach. Which is usually human aware and patient
centered, by assisting any member of the staff to air their opinions and share data, despite their

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professional level. The aim in this case is to gather and provide as much as possible the
information regarding to the patients rehabilitation process.
Project Planning and Gantt chart
The entire research will take 30 weeks, in which the project will be broken down as illustrated in
the Gantt chart below.
ACTIVITY Week
1 - 4
Week
5 - 8
Week
9 - 12
Week
13 -15
Week
16 - 18
Week
19- 22
Week
23- 25
Week
26-30
Finding the right supervisor
Discussing the research topic with the supervisor
Assembling all the required resources and tools
Conducting a literature review
Writing the first draft of the proposal
Presenting the draft to the supervisor
Carrying out the experiments and collect data
Writing the second draft
Presenting the second draft to the supervisor
Analyzing the collected data
Presenting the analyzed data to the supervisor
Writing the final project
Completed
Yet to be complete
Conclusions
This proposal has introduced a system for medical rehabilitation making application of the cloud
computing technology and virtual and augmented reality. The presented system is a cloud-
based customizable platform for the provision of virtual environment and management of
rehabilitation information for the patient recovery purposes. The system has been designed with
structural similarities to the educational settings in order to strengthen the analysis of
information and to encourage evaluation and motorization in the rehabilitation programs. The

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wide range of the available devices , makes it essential to develop a platform that can
efficiently handle the rehabilitation games and the data generated . The system is flexible to
allow for simplified installation, management and creation of the deployment of the
rehabilitation games to different types of dices. An integration layer should be created to act as
application programming interface between the framework and the device.
References

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Adeli, H., 2018. Recent Advances in Information Systems and Technologies,. 2nd ed. Texas:
Springer.
Deng, D.-J., 2017. Advanced Technologies, Embedded and Multimedia for Human-centric
Computing. 3rd ed. London: London.
Eddings, J., 2014. How virtual reality works. 4th ed. Chicago: Ziff-Davis Press.
Erickson, M., 2011. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and
Applications: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications. 1st ed. Sydney: IGI Global.
Furht, B., 2011. Handbook of Augmented Reality. 1st ed. London: Springer Science & Business
Media.
Jung, T., 2015. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality: Empowering Human, Place and
Business. 1st ed. Kiev: Springer.
Nguyen, G. N., 2017. Emerging Technologies for Health and Medicine: Virtual Reality,
Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Robotics, Industry 4.0. 3rd ed.
London: Wiley,.
Rocha, Á., 2012. New Perspectives in Information Systems and Technologies. 94 ed. Perth:
Springer Science & Business Media.