Recovering stroke and brain injury patients worldwide are benefiting from a unique, game-based rehab system which targets language and movement problems at the same time. The system has been developed by Reading clinical language scientists, working with biomedical engineers, patients and therapists.
One person has a stroke every five minutes in the UK. Better medical care means more people than ever now survive it, but as a consequence there are many more people with long-term rehabilitation needs – 1.2 million in the UK alone. These people often have difficulty with language and limb movement, which can affect their self-esteem and independence.
Led by Dr Holly Robson and Professor Rachel McCrindle, a team of clinical language scientists at the University of Reading collaborated with biomedical engineers, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and patients to come up with a solution. Together they have developed a combined Motor and Language Therapy (MaLT) system for stroke and traumatic brain injury patients which allows them to manage their own rehabilitation through playing therapeutic video games.
Uniquely, MaLT allows users to work on both upper limb movement and language comprehension at the same time, and it can be tailored to a person’s interests. It also uses algorithms to generate increasingly difficult yet individual game play elements, for example using arm movement to ‘find the dog’ on screen, building up to ‘find the one that rhymes with log’. It can also be adapted to patients whose first language is not English.
Medical device manufacturer Evolv has been suitably impressed; it has worked with the team to incorporate two dual-therapy MaLT games into its EvolvRehab commercial rehabilitation product. Now available in six other languages, EvolvRehab is helping patients in over 300 hospitals, clinics and care homes in 20 countries around the world to manage their own recovery and regain autonomy and self-esteem.
Find out more
View the full impact case study on the REF 2021 website: Combined Motor and Language Therapy (MaLT) system for stroke and brain injury rehabilitation.