Libra@Home has developed a cost-effective, fully immersive virtual reality platform for physical and occupational therapists to improve the quality of treatment for patients with neurological and balance disorders.
Neurological and inner ear disorders affecting eye movement and balance can cause debilitating symptoms that disrupt daily life, including headaches, spatial disorientation, severe dizziness, vertigo, instability and loss of balance. Vestibular neurorehabilitation has proven effective at alleviating these symptoms, using clinical assessments to devise an intensive treatment program based on the patient’s individual deficits. The home exercise protocol is an essential component of the program. It entails controlled, limited interactions with visual stimuli several times a day, using specific head and eye movements designed to elicit a vestibular response to train the brain. However, these exercises can be monotonous and unpleasant. They temporarily exacerbate symptoms, presenting a significant challenge to preserving patients’ compliance and consistency, which can have a negative impact on treatment efficiency and clinical outcomes.
The LibraVR CE-certified platform incorporates a variety of highly customizable exercises for therapists to build personalized in-clinic and home-based programs. Patients can perform their vestibular exercises using a smartphone or off-the-shelf VR headset, interacting with visual stimuli in immersive, virtual environments for a more engaging experience than traditional solutions offer. Therapists can monitor objective measurements of patients’ performance and compliance for informed, data-driven decisions to calibrate exercises, maximize therapeutic gains and allow therapists to treat new patients. Libra@Home’s in-clinic solution is being used by therapists across the globe. The company is currently developing an enhanced home-based solution with eye tracking algorithms to further improve the accuracy of activity measurements.