VR System for Neurorehabilitation: Where Technology Meets Medicine for Empowering Patients and Therapists in the Rehabilitation Process.

Globally, rehabilitation in healthcare systems requires major improvements so that affordable, high-quality services will become available to a larger scale. Rehabilitation benefits both individuals and the entire community from an economic and social point of view. There are different types of rehabilitation, for a wide range of medical conditions, and each type requires a series of specific procedures performed by the patient, under therapist's guidance. Unfortunately, classical rehabilitation techniques have severe limitations in terms of results and large-scale availability, due to costs and lack of specialists. It is thus necessary to use the advantages of modern technologies, such as robotics, sensors or virtual reality in order to improve the results and make them accessible to many patients. In this paper, first we analyze the medical conditions that need specific neurorehabilitation procedures and their classical, currently used therapies. Then, we point out the potential of rehabilitation technologies based on robotics and virtual reality. Finally, we describe our own system concept, which uses virtual reality and movement tracking sensors for treating a series of neurological conditions. The system consists of two subsystems: one for the actual patients' rehabilitation and one for training the medical staff (students, residents, nurses, chiropractors or physicians) involved in neurorehabilitation. The system's architecture is easily extendable with new functionalities, specific to other types of rehabilitation.