Smartphone serious games for senses evaluation

Abstract

Falls are the second leading cause of accidental injury deaths worldwide. Each year, many older people fall and this frequently leads to injury, suffering, fear, loss of independence and reduced quality of life. Falls are often caused by a number of factors, and interventions such as physical therapy, adjusting medications or behavior change can reduce the elderly fall rate. Determination of fall risks is therefore needed in order to identify who may benefit from interventions. Specific tests and questionnaires are used periodically to assess fall risks at clinics. However, changes in fall risk may occur suddenly or gradually and clinic visits may not occur frequently enough to detect more sudden changes. The purpose of this research is to allow the user to perform some of the tests by himself at home, so that the tests can become more regular and therefore more responsive to sudden changes. The aim of this project would not be to replace clinic visits, but offer the user the means to continue the tracking of his fall risk from home, so that if dangerous readings are detected the user can be immediately directed to the clinic. In this project, the fall risk factors targeted are the visual function and the hearing loss. By creating an android application capable of evaluating the visual and hearing capabilities of the user it is possible to track the continuous evolution of the readings, easily detecting any anomalies. This project also aims to provide this evaluation through serious gaming, so that this task can be as pleasant as possible and therefore get the user to perform the evaluation more frequently.