Strokes occur more frequently in Ukraine than in the European Union, affecting mostly people between the age of 40 and 54. More than 112,000 strokes were registered in 2012 – with 40 percent of victims likely to die within a year after suffering them, according to Maryna Gulayeva, executive officer at the Ukrainian Association for Treating Stroke.
“These
figures are more than 2.5 times higher in comparison to European countries,”
Gulayeva adds. The biggest problem, the expert believes, is a “shortage of
rehabilitation centers for stroke survivors.”
Public
hospitals don’t offer rehabilitation programs for stroke patients, said
Gulayeva, and there is only one private hospital in Kyiv that does. The ones
that do in Ukraine usually include neurological rehabilitation techniques and an
ergotherapist who helps patients recover daily living and work
skills. They also offer psychological treatment.
Information
technology companies are moving in to fill the void and help tackle heart
diseases.
In 2012 Digital
Cloud Technologies in Kharkiv decided to find new paths for treating stroke
survivors. Partnering with Microsoft, the DCT team focused on gaming therapy.
The company
came up with an interactive game, called Revival Health. “We spent some time
working at Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 in Dnipropetrovsk to find out how to
design the game for better medical use,” said Volodymyr Lishchynskiy, the
project’s chief executive officer.
The game
uses Microsoft’s Kinect, motion gesture hardware designed for the Xbox game
console. It enables patients to interact with simple gestures, without the use
of a game controller. The game fosters high-repetition limb movements that post-stroke
patients need to recover.
Revival
Health includes some 3D avatars and the patient can choose their protagonist.
“It offers special game play tasks, where patients have to help their heroes to
do simple tasks: pick up bricks, switch off the light in the room or plug in a
charger,” Lishchynskiy explained.
By
completing the series of proposed tasks, patients restore motor abilities. Lishchynskiy
says these simple tasks are difficult for stroke victims to complete.
To use the
technology, doctors need only a laptop or personal computer that has the game
application installed, including the Kinect hardware linked to a television
screen. As the patient plays the game, the recreational therapist monitors their
performance and tracks their progress.
Yuriy Sapa,
who heads the Clinical Center for Medical help No. 5 in Dnipropetrovsk believes
Kinect game therapy offers promise for stroke patients. As one of the first
clinics to support the project, Sapa said the therapy needs to be scaled up to
get a better measurement of results since only a handful of patients have gone
through the therapy.
However, the
medical community remains mostly skeptical about game therapy.
Nadiia
Piontkivska, a recreation therapist at Oberig hospital that offers
rehabilitation programs for stroke survivors in Kyiv, is sure “gaming therapy
can augment the main treatment.”
“It’s a good
motivation tool,” Piontkivska adds. “We also have some games designed specially
to fight motor weakness. For example, the patient can play virtual basketball
using a Hand Tutor glove, an exercise-based hand rehabilitation that provides
intense motor practice.”
But the
rehab program at Oberig is on the pricey side and costs from Hr 19,000 to Hr
65,000 for the treatment.
The
treatment method designed by the DCT team, however, will be cheaper for
Ukrainian hospitals. But health clinics often turn a blind eye to the
initiative because of the lack of funding. Now developers are even ready to
give the game out for no charge.
“It’s a social
project which is difficult to run in Ukraine,” Lishchynskiy admits.
Currently the
DCT team is in search of benefactors to get the project going. The company needs
to allocate at least $10,000 to make their game prototype mass produced. Dmytro
Shymkiv, who heads Microsoft Ukraine, said in mid-October the project was
presented in Odesa and may seek the interest of local hospitals.
Andriy
Kolodyuk, partner at AVentures Capital, a Ukrainian venture capital fund that
invests mostly in the IT sector, is sure such initiatives may find potential
investors, but “it’s better to revise the business model and shift it to the commercial
side, so investors may benefit.”
Kyiv
Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].
