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| Development of serious video games for speech-language therapy | |
|---|---|
| Investigator (PI): | Newman, Aaron |
| Performing Organization (PO): |
(Current): Dalhousie University, Faculty of Science, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience / (902) 494-3417 |
| Supporting Agency (SA): | Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation |
| Initial Year: | 2015 |
| Final Year: | 2016 |
| Record Source/Award ID: | NSHRF/10093 |
| Funding: | Total Award Amount: $15,000 |
| Award Type: | Grant |
| Abstract: | Aphasia is a devastating disorder in which people lose the ability to speak and/or understand language. Most often caused by stroke, aphasia will strike nearly half of people over age 65, as well as many younger adults. Aphasia will affect their ability to communicate with their spouse and families, hold down a job, or enjoy a TV program or read the newspaper. With standard treatments, only about half of victims will ever recover from their aphasia. With intensive (3 hours/day or more) treatment, better outcomes are possible. However the cost of such treatment puts it out of reach of most people, and in many places this treatment is not even available. A computer-based software platform could make a significant improvement in the lives of many people with aphasia, allowing at-home treatment to supplement other therapy they may be receiving. At present however, there are few options and reports suggest that they don't work well in the real world; they can be difficult to install and learn, boring to use, and offer users little enjoyment, encouragement, or constructive feedback. We aim to change this. Our ultimate goal is to combine basic and clinical research with best practices from the video game industry and startup culture to deliver an effective and engaging software platform for aphasia therapy. Our vision is to embed effective aphasia treatments in video games that make the treatments fun and engaging, so that people will be motivated to put in the hours necessary to recover. In this initial pilot project, we will establish the necessary groundwork to reach this goal. This will involve background research, combined with extensive interviews with key stakeholders: people with aphasia, their families, and clinicians. From this we will identify key needs and pain points to be addressed. We will then build different simple prototype solutions to these needs, and get feedback on how well these address the needs of people with aphasia. This feedback will be used to build a refined prototype and, in the final phase of this pilot project, test this prototype to determine how easy to use and effective this solution is. Since the ultimate goal of this research is to put effective treatment in the hands of people who need it, we are developing the project from the ground up with an eye to developing a commercial product. Thus we will combine scientific research on the effectiveness of our treatment approach with feedback on usability, market research, and consideration of relevant legal issues. The result will be a scientifically proven treatment that is tailored to the needs of our target audience, and viable as a near-term solution that they can actually use. The research conducted in this pilot project will provide the data necessary for to build more extensive versions of the treatment approach and conduct clinical trials to test it. These next steps would be funded through the NSERC Idea to Innovation (I2I) program, ultimately leading to commercialization of the treatment program through a Canadian company. |
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| Country: | Canada |
| State: | Nova Scotia |
| Zip Code: | B3H 4R2 |
| UI: | 20161274 |
| Project Status: | Completed |