13 - Virtual reality in neurorehabilitation

Summary

Imagine the following scenario. Stuck in traffic, you have your digital agent make contact with the secretary at the Rehabilitation Center via your wireless palmtop. You are immediately provided with a verbal listing of your daily schedule. It is clear that you will have a tight timetable, and already anticipate a hectic day filled with clinical rounds, research meetings and an afternoon lecture for third year medical students. You request your digital agent to retrieve last year's lecture presentation on the rehabilitation of patients with Parkinson's disease, and to locate abstracts of the latest research on this topic. These files will be waiting for you on your office computer when you arrive at the Rehabilitation Center. Finally traffic starts to move, and you make it to your office. Clinical rounds have been delayed and you use the opportunity to complete your daily exercise routine on your stationary bike which is facing an omnisurround screen. Viewing a virtual mountain path winding through the Swiss Alps, you are inspired to cycle uphill for a full 15 min. Your digital agent calls you just as you warm down to notify you that ward rounds are about to begin. The first patient is a 45-year-old businessman who is at the Center for intensive rehabilitation following knee arthroscopy. The patient is anxious to return home so you ask your intelligent agent to contact the agents of the surgeon, physiotherapist and occupational therapist who are not currently at the Center.