Opportunity for a PhD Studentship in: – Games for Health: The development of OTAGO-based rehabilitation games to reduce falls and injuries in older people.

Applications are invited for a full-time PhD research Studentship within the School of Engineering and Computing.  The studentship is for a period of three years, subject to satisfactory progress and provides payment of tuition fees at the UK/EU rate plus an annual stipend of £14,275*.  The successful candidate is expected to undertake up to 6 hours of academic support activity per week.

*[please note that students from outside the EU are required to pay the difference between International and EU fees, currently this would amount to £6,100 per annum.  This will be deducted from the stipend at the beginning of each session providing an annual stipend of £8,175.]

Project Description

‘Falls’ is a global phenomena, which seriously impacts the physical and psychological health of an aging population. Around 30% of adults who are over 65 years of age will experience one fall a year. This figure rises to 50% for those living in nursing homes or residential care. Not all falls will result in injury, but 20% of older adults will require medical attention for a fall, and 5% will experience serious injury, such as a fracture. The cost associated with falls in the UK is currently over £2 billion. Falls can also have an adverse psychological impact, including a person losing confidence, becoming isolated and moving into a residential setting. OTAGO is a home-based rehabilitation exercise programme that has been developed specifically to promote strength and balance skills in an elderly population. Five randomised control trials in New Zealand have shown OTAGO to be effective in enhancing physical health and significantly lowering the likelihood of further falls. However, like many rehabilitation programmes, OTAGO suffers from poor patient compliance when missing intensive investment of a professional’s time in supervision. The exercises are repetitive in nature, making it difficult for people to maintain engagement throughout the programme.

Research Objectives

Part of a larger MRC project, the aim of this work-package is to develop an interactive exercise delivery system for OTAGO. Such a system will apply gaming technology to increase patient motivation and engagement during exercise. This new implementation of OTAGO will be developed for OpenBox – an open-platform serious-game system developed by eMotionLab. Applying randomised control trials, the student will evaluate enhanced OTAGO exercises with an older population at risk of falls.

The ideal candidate will have good software development skills and a preferred knowledge and experience of gaming technology. Previous experience developing games for health would be a distinct advantage. The candidate will be supervised by Dr Jonathan Sykes and Dr Dawn Skelton. This studentship is half funded by the MRC as part of the project “Biomechanical Falls prevention advice & visual feedback to those at risk of falling” and half funded by the School of Engineering and Computing. For enquiries contact Dr Jonathan Sykes at jon.sykes@gcal.ac.uk

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Filed Under: Computer Science • Glasgow Caledonian University