Effective game use in neurorehabilitation: User-centered perspectives

Games possess highly favourable attributes to bring to the field of neurorehabilitation by means of providing motivation and goal-directed exercise tasks. For the use of games to be effectively integrated in the commercial and clinical rehabilitation marketplace, it is necessary that a unified and comprehensive rehabilitation gaming platform be developed following principles of user-centered design. The needed platform must contain compatible modules for the planning and execution of treatment as well as progress assessment, and its development must take into consideration the needs and viewpoints of the involved stakeholders and the required supporting factors, including: patient, prescriber, therapist, care-provider, family, clinic, as well as supporting scientific evidence, technology, and policy. A proposed platform and needed components are explained and an example prototype rehabilitation platform is provided for discussion.