Yes Wii can! Using digital games as a rehabilitation platform after stroke - The role of social support

A CVA or stroke is frequently a life changing event for both the person suffering the CVA as well as their immediate family. At Eindhoven University of Technology we focus on facilitating people´s continued rehabilitation at home using digital games as a rehabilitation platform. As a first step we have recently conducted a requirements analyses from which we concluded that: (1) social support is critical for patient motivation in order to adhere to the necessary regime of rehabilitation exercises in the chronic phase of CVA, (2) there is a perceived difficulty within the intimate social network around a patient (family, friends) in (re)connecting to the patient, and there is a need to engage in meaningful activities with the patient, (3) technology is not yet available that is specifically designed to support such social engagement with the larger social circle around CVA patients.