Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Previously submitted to: JMIR Serious Games (no longer under consideration since Oct 21, 2025)

Date Submitted: Jul 16, 2025

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Electrotactile, Vibrotactile, and Thermal Feedback in a Wearable CPR Training Game: Comparative Effectiveness Study

  • zhiming liu; 
  • Yibo Meng; 
  • yiqi xiao; 
  • sunan tian; 
  • xudong cai; 
  • Guoli zhang; 
  • hankun su; 
  • zhihao lei; 
  • zhefang hu

ABSTRACT

Background:

Background:

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a critical skill for healthcare professionals, where the timeliness and precision of execution directly affect patient survival outcomes. Traditional CPR training methods often lack authentic haptic feedback, resulting in suboptimal skill transfer to real-world clinical scenarios.

Objective:

Objective:

This study investigates how multimodal gamification can enhance CPR skill acquisition by integrating three distinct types of haptic feedback—vibrotactile, thermotactile, and electrotactile—into a serious game–based training system. The goal is to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of each feedback modality in supporting CPR training outcomes.

Methods:

Methods:

We developed a serious game that provides real-time feedback on compression depth, frequency, and hand placement during training sessions. The system not only aids in guiding compression accuracy but also tracks the rate of target achievement. Three feedback modalities were individually assessed to determine their impact on improving CPR performance.

Results:

Results:

Compared to conventional training methods, participants using the serious game demonstrated improved accuracy in compression depth and reported greater confidence in performing CPR. Performance improvements were observed with electrotactile, vibrotactile, and thermotactile feedback by 43.6%, 24.5%, and 17.7%, respectively. Among them, electrotactile feedback yielded the most significant performance gains, though System Usability Scale (SUS) ratings suggested a potential trade-off in user experience.

Conclusions:

Conclusions:

This work highlights the potential of serious games to bridge the gap between simulation-based training and real-life application, offering a novel approach for dynamic error correction and long-term skill retention through enhanced interactive experiences.


 Citation

Please cite as:

liu z, Meng Y, xiao y, tian s, cai x, zhang G, su h, lei z, hu z

Electrotactile, Vibrotactile, and Thermal Feedback in a Wearable CPR Training Game: Comparative Effectiveness Study

JMIR Preprints. 16/07/2025:80768

DOI: 10.2196/preprints.80768

URL: https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/80768

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.