Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common motor disorder and cause of disability in children, with a prevalenceof roughly half a million children in the United States. Nearly all children with CP undergo physical therapy toimprove gait, strength, balance, or flexibility. This therapy depends on dosage far in excess of available clinicalsession time, making adherence to an at-home therapy regimen critical to success. As therapy may be difficult,repetitive, or just not fun, maintaining engagement, adherence, and exercise relevance and quality in pediatricrehabilitation patients are critical barriers to an effective at-home rehabilitative physical therapy regimen. To promote engagement and adherence, a solution must be attractive and fun, build rapport with the patient,and promote focus within a session as well as longitudinal motivation. Active video games have proven to be animprovement over typical practice but leave room for innovation; recent research suggests a promisingcomplementary approach based on an artificially intelligent, physically embodied social agent. By activatinghumans' natural social responses, socially assistive robots have been shown to enhance engagement andadherence in related settings. Charles River Analytics and our partners at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital propose a Phase I SBIR toprototype and demonstrate the feasibility of "Rehabilitation Engagement at Home with a socially Assistive roBotfor Pediatric Adherence" (REHAB-PAL). REHAB-PAL is a socially assistive robot for children undergoingrehabilitative physical therapy that provides companionship and engagement during therapy. REHAB-PALimproves adherence to the home-care regimen by encouraging the prescribed therapeutic exercises with funand supportive interaction. To rigorously isolate its effects, we will compare the robot to a behaviorally analogousscreen-based virtual agent. We will prototype and demonstrate REHAB-PAL's feasibility via three Specific Aims: (1) Design and developsocially assistive application software for a commercially available small humanoid robot and a screen-basedvirtual agent. (2) Integrate with a visuo-motor integration task. (3) Evaluate clinical suitability of REHAB-PAL forgait and balance training in children with CP. Ultimately, we aim to show that REHAB-PAL offers patients an engaging and encouraging companionthroughout a potentially dreary treatment, while offering clinicians a superior tool to keep pediatric patientsmotivated and focused on their treatment and a valuable proxy to provide continuity, consistency and monitoringduring home care. By enhancing the efficacy of therapeutic dosage outside the clinic, REHAB-PAL has thepotential to extend and improve care, with less frequent clinic visits and improved adherence.
Public Health Relevance Statement: Project Narrative Nearly all children with Cerebral Palsy require physical therapy far in excess of available clinical session time, and as therapy may be difficult and repetitive, maintaining engagement and adherence in pediatric patients is critical to an effective at-home rehabilitative therapy regimen. "Rehabilitation Engagement at Home with a socially Assistive roBot for Pediatric Adherence" (REHAB-PAL) is a socially assistive robot for children undergoing rehabilitative physical therapy that improves adherence to the home-care regimen by encouraging the prescribed therapeutic exercises with fun and supportive interaction. REHAB-PAL offers patients an engaging and encouraging companion throughout a potentially dreary treatment, while offering clinicians a superior tool to keep pediatric patients motivated and focused on their treatment and a valuable proxy providing continuity, consistency and monitoring during home care.
Project Terms: Artificial Intelligence ; AI system ; Computer Reasoning ; Machine Intelligence ; Cerebral Palsy ; Child ; 0-11 years old ; Child Youth ; Children (0-21) ; youngster ; Clinic Visits ; Equilibrium ; balance ; balance function ; Exercise ; Feedback ; Gait ; Government ; Hospitals ; Human ; Modern Man ; Libraries ; Motivation ; Movement ; body movement ; Persons ; Paper ; Patient Monitoring ; Patients ; Rehabilitation therapy ; Medical Rehabilitation ; Rehabilitation ; rehab therapy ; rehabilitative ; rehabilitative therapy ; Research ; Role ; social role ; Social Behavior ; sociobehavior ; sociobehavioral ; Computer software ; Software ; Testing ; Time ; United States ; Video Games ; videogame ; Weight ; Measures ; Caregivers ; Care Givers ; Healthcare ; health care ; Caring ; base ; dosage ; improved ; patient home care ; Home Care ; patient homecare ; Clinical ; Phase ; Evaluation ; motor disorder ; motor disease ; motor dysfunction ; disability ; Childhood ; pediatric ; Licensing ; Progress Reports ; Therapeutic ; Contracting Opportunities ; Contracts ; Companions ; Robot ; tool ; Rivers ; animation ; Clinic ; Performance ; success ; Proxy ; peer ; Self-Report ; Patient Self-Report ; social ; response ; Physiatric Procedure ; Physical Medicine Procedure ; Physical Therapeutics ; Physiotherapy ; Physical therapy ; Address ; Adherence ; Small Business Innovation Research Grant ; SBIR ; Small Business Innovation Research ; Monitor ; Behavioral ; virtual ; design ; designing ; Treatment Efficacy ; intervention efficacy ; therapeutic efficacy ; therapy efficacy ; Outcome ; visual motor ; visuomotor ; Balance training ; Prevalence ; innovation ; innovate ; innovative ; prototype ; commercialization ; flexibility ; flexible ; Regimen ; Institutional Review Boards ; IRB ; IRBs ; Physical Rehabilitation ; physical rehab ; pediatric patients ; child patients ; gait rehabilitation ; gait recovery ; gait rehab ; gait retraining ; gait training ; individual patient ; social assistive robot ; social robot ; home test ; home-based test ; Home ;
