Neurological and inner ear disorders affecting eye movement and balance can cause debilitating symptoms that disrupt daily life, including headache, 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 a substantial component of the program, which entails controlled limited interactions with visual stimuli using specific head and eye movements designed to elicit a vestibular response several times a day to train the brain. These exercises are monotonous and usually unpleasant because 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
Libra@Home has developed an affordable fully immersive virtual reality platform for physical and occupational therapists to improve delivery and quality of treatment for patients with neurological and balance disorders. Their CE-certified platform contains a number of highly customizable exercises that therapists use to build personalized clinic and home programs. Patients 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 with traditional solutions. Therapists monitor objective measurements of patients’ performance and compliance that inform data-driven decisions to calibrate exercises, maximizing patients’ therapeutic gains and allowing therapists to treat new patients. Libra@Home’s in-clinic solution is already used by therapists around the world and are in the process of developing an enhanced home solution with eye tracking algorithms to improve accuracy of activity measurements.