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Chapter 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8200-9.ch020
A Serious Games Framework
for Health Rehabilitation
ABSTRACT
Serious Games is a field of research that has evolved substantially with valuable contributions to many
application domains and areas. Patients often consider traditional rehabilitation approaches to be repeti-
tive and boring, making it difficult for them to maintain their ongoing interest and to assure the comple-
tion of the treatment program. This paper reviews Serious Games and the natural and multimodal user
interfaces for the health rehabilitation domain. Specifically, it details a framework for the development
of Serious Games that integrates a rich set of features that can be used to improve the designed games
with direct benefits to the rehabilitation process. Highlighted features include natural and multimodal
interaction, social skills (collaboration and competitiveness) and progress monitoring. Due to the rich
set of features supported by the framework, the games’ rehabilitation efficacy can be enhanced primarily
from an increase in the patient’s motivation when exercising the rehabilitation tasks.
1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, increasing attention is called upon
and given to the development of tools for the
rehabilitation of patients suffering from vari-
ous disabilities. Additionally, the use of Serious
Games as part of these rehabilitation tools is also
proliferating. Serious Games is a field of research
that has evolved substantially with valuable and
potentially beneficial contributions in many areas.
As a multidisciplinary field of research, Serious
Games can be applied to solve different problems
in wide-ranging areas such as: education, mili-
tary, health care and rehabilitation. In such areas,
Paula Alexandra Rego
Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, Portugal & Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and
Computer Science, Portugal
Pedro Miguel Moreira
Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, Portugal & Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and
Computer Science, Portugal
Luís Paulo Reis
University of Minho, Portugal & Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Portugal