Physiotherapy is hard. It is even harder for children who get bored and tire quickly from the repetitive motions that doctors prescribe for them. Raft Digital Therapeutics (Raft) created an interactive video game to help children with a rare degenerative neuromuscular disease – Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) – to maintain their physical abilities, improve outcomes, and promote a higher quality of life. Their game has found success with children, parents, and clinicians.
Healthcare IT Today had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Geoff Frost, CEO of Raft and practicing physiatrist, to find out about their game, their recent successes, and their plans for the next year.
How Bazaar
Through his practice, Dr. Frost found himself constantly asking and lecturing his young patients to do the necessary exercises to maintain muscle and range of motion. He knew that this was not sustainable and frankly not enjoyable for anyone – his patients, their parents, and himself. Dr. Frost began to think of ways to meet his patients halfway.
“The solution we came up with is a game called Cloud Bazaar,” said Dr. Frost. “With this game, instead of using a controller, players use their body to make their character take certain actions.”
Equipped with motion capture technology, the game tracks and responds to movements through the built-in camera on players’ computers as they navigate increasingly difficult levels. It engages young players by placing them on a “mission” in which they fly an airship that protects the fictional city of the Cloud Bazaar. To do so, they are challenged to complete a set of guided movements that were developed in consultation with, and based on, feedback from neuromuscular disease experts and youth in the SMA community.
Shoulder Activities
“We are trying to help the children with is basic activities of daily living,” explained Dr. Frost. “And for us, that means shoulder activities. Things that you or I might take for granted, like the ability to bring a fork to our mouth to feed ourselves. That basic elbow and shoulder motion can be challenging for our kids with SMA.”
The current iteration of Cloud Bazaar focuses on shoulder physiotherapy. The game is a hit with patients and their parents. The feedback has been exactly what Dr. Frost and his team wanted to hear with children saying that playing the game does not feel like doing exercise at all.
Over the next twelve months, the Raft team plan to continue to add new content to the game.
“We’ve got our first opening tale, which is you’re saving the floating city of the Cloud Bazaar,” said Dr. Frost. “But there’s so much more to the depth of the universe of the Cloud Bazaar that we want to build into the game.”
A demo of Cloud Bazaar is available on Steam.
Watch the interview with Dr. Geoff Frost to learn:
- How the Raft team incorporate feedback from children with SMA into the game design
- Why it was important for the game to have a protagonist that represented their target player
- What other plans the Raft team has for their game
Find out more about Raft Digital Therapeutics at https://raftdt.com/
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