Current situation of children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy

Among various conditions that lead to disability, Cerebral Palsy is one of the most common impairments that cause disability in children. Estimated figures indicate that 1.5 to 2.5 children per 1000 live births suffer from Cerebral Palsy (Gupta & Appleton, 2001). Cerebral Palsy is a group of motor-neuron diseases that occur pre-natal, during birth or early stages of development of infants.

INTERVIEW WITH A FATHER OF A PATIENT

According to the interview, this father’s son has LGS cerebral palsy. He needs to accompany his child to hospital for rehabilitation once a week. Most of the time he help his son do rehabilitation exercise at home. The problem is that going to hospital cost a lot. He doesn’t get any instruction or feedback of rehabilitation at home.

INTERVIEW WITH A REHABILITATION SPECIALIST

According to the interview, we got to know rehabilitation resource is not placed enough emphasis even in big hospital in Shanghai. The method of arm rehabilitation is to repeatedly stretch each joint of arm. Patients can rewire the brain through neuroplasticity. This is how the brain heals itself after stroke and starts to regain functions.

SOLUTION

Aimed at a more convenient, accurate and low cost rehabilitation experience, a self-directed sensor-based arm rehabilitation system is designed. This system contains a wearable device on arm that senses the degree of recovery and control the level of resistance, as well as a gamification system that guides user to an accurate rehabilitation process.

ELEMENTS OF THE SYSTEM

The Gamification Guide System

This rehabilitation system employs simple game to guide kids how to conduct daily rehabilitation process, including finger training, elbow training and shoulder training. Together with the sensor-based wearable device, the system will feedback accurate improvement so as to encourage the kids to keep on the progress.