Using augmented reality and behavioural change techniques to assist children in their physiotherapy recovery

This project is to investigate the use of behavioural change techniques in a mobile application to be used at home during a child's physiotherapy rehabilitation and recovery. The app will aim to encourage active participation in recovery and use gamification techniques to keep the child interested and motivated. Behavioural change techniques will be deployed to reduce negative attitudes towards their rehabilitation and build action plans and positive attitudes towards achieving their recovery goals. As a first step, I am investigating the Augmented Reality capabilities of the iPad with the intention of building an app that tracks the user's movements and provides feedback to the users and physios.



The first small prototype will be used to evaluate the feasibility of the augmented reality features and will be evaluated by a physiotherapy healthcare worker. From there, I will begin iteratively developing the app including both experts (physiotherapists and behavioural change experts) and groups of healthy children to create reward systems and feedback gathering techniques for the app. The final app will aim explore the effectiveness of these behavioural change techniques for telerehabilitation and potentially provide a tool for healthcare professionals to use with their patients at home.