Improving rehabilitation process after total knee replacement surgery through visual feedback and enhanced communication in a serious game

A common problem during rehabilitation after total knee replacement surgery is a lack of intrinsic motivation to do the necessary exercises at home. Doing the exercises at home without the supervision of a physical therapist raises the risk that patients do not execute the activities in a safe and effective manner. To address this problem, we developed a serious exergame to improve engagement and the efficiency of the rehabilitation process. A team of game developers, physiotherapists and a researcher collaborated to contribute to the design and prototype development. This led to a prototype using Microsoft Kinect as an input device to engage users combined with an individualized setup that provides visual rewarding and corrective feedback to the patient and a communication channel to the therapist to enable performance monitoring. This interdisciplinary process we were engaged in has implications for the development of engaging exergames that communicate clinically relevant performance information to elderly patients through a visual feedback tool.