Lumapath: An Immersive Virtual Reality Game For Encouraging Physical Activity For Senior Arthritis Patients

Arthritis occurs typically in the senior populations which involves stiff and painful joints. The prevalence of arthritis in the U.S. is 20% and in Canada is 15.8% for 4.3 million, and it decreases the patients' joint movement and physical activity to a severe degree. Even worse, more than half of the patients do not receive any treatment at all. Studies have shown that physical exercise or movement of the affected joint can noticeably improve long-term pain relief. In general, studies have shown that arthritis patients' movement of the affected joint implies physical activity. However, very few commercial games or research prototypes have been specially designed for arthritis population for promoting activities and their Range of Motion (RoM). Therefore, we created an immersive VR game named LumaPath. Meanwhile, we conducted a pilot study with five senior arthritis patients to evaluate their experience and assess LumaPath, and twenty-three healthy participants among which there are three senior participants. Overall, the study results showed that LumaPath had great potential as a gamified tool to motivate senior adults to stay physically active. Furthermore, we discovered that patients' limited physical movement and RoM, and the age were significant factors affecting their gaming experience, interactions and how to execute certain physical movements.