Serious games and in-cloud data analytics for the virtualization and personalization of rehabilitation treatments

During the last years, the significant increase in the number of patients in need of rehabilitation has generated an unsustainable economic impact on healthcare systems, implying a reduction in therapeutic supervision and support for each patient. To address this problem, this paper proposes a tele-rehabilitation system based on serious games and in-cloud data analytics services, in accordance with Industry 4.0 design principles regarding modularity, service orientation, decentralization, virtualization and real-time capability. The system, specialized for post-stroke patients, comprises components for real-time acquisition of patient's motor data and a decision support service for their analysis. Raw data, reports, and recommendations are made available on the cloud to clinical operators to remotely assess rehabilitation outcomes and dynamically improve therapies. Furthermore, the results of a pilot study on the clinical impact deriving from the adoption of the proposed solution, and of a qualitative analysis about its acceptance, are presented and discussed.