JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Serious games work as a support for the traditional rehabilitation process because it reduces the recovering time of patients. But many serious games for physical rehabilitation focus their efforts on one or several aspects by separate. To avoid the previous problems, it must have a serious game handbook for the development process.

Objective:

This paper submits the results of a systematic review of serious games for physical rehabilitation using a framework for its development.

Methods:

A systematic research was done in MEDLINE and PubMed, PEDro (Physiotherapy Evidence Database), IEEE Xplore, and ScienceDirect databases. The initial research got 217 papers. After assessing the results according to the inclusion criteria, just 59 were left for this study.

Results:

From the 59 papers which were reviewed, 9 of them use a framework or a methodology for its development, most of them focus their efforts on one or several aspects such as data acquisition and processing, game levels, motivation, therapist supervision, what causes no adaptation to the patient's needs.

Conclusions:

This systematic review proves that most of the serious games do not use a framework for the development, it makes that development systems overlook several aspects and does not have a standardized process, for what they omit important implementation aspects, what impact on the patient's recovering time.