Virtual reality is more commonly associated with gaming than older Australians and health benefits, but researchers have found this technology is an effective tool in the fight against falls.
Falls are a significant public health issue causing death and injury, with people over 65 years of age at greatest risk. A virtual reality (VR) study led by Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) Research Fellow and Conjoint Senior Lecturer at School of Population Health at the University of New South Wales Sydney, Dr Yoshiro Okubo, used technology to help people build obstacle avoidance skills that may help them prevent falls risk in real life.
"Approximately one in three people over 65 years old living in the community experience at least one fall each year, with most of these being due to trips and slips," Dr Okubo said.
"We want to help people build their skills and reduce their risk of falling. For this research, we used a virtual reality system and treadmill to train people to avoid obstacles that they may find on a suburban footpath. This was about building up their obstacle avoidance skills."
The study engaged 56 participants who were aged 65 years and over, who were living independently in the community.
VR for more than fun
While VR is gaming technology that can provide hours of entertainment, for researchers its headsets, controllers and computer-generated environments provide virtual worlds that are standardised, controlled and reproducible. For this study, participants completed eight-minute walking tasks on a specialised research treadmill in a virtual environment. Participants had to navigate a concrete footpath with slip and trip obstacles and there were also virtual apples to collect along the way.
Importantly, the system was configured so participants could undertake the training with or without physical feedback to obstacle collisions.
"The physical feedback was provided by abrupt treadmill belt translations that created momentary balance loss, similar to trips and slips in everyday life," Dr Okubo said.
"We found this feedback plays crucial role for older people to learn to avoid obstacle.
"Importantly, participants found the VR activity enjoyable and motion sickness was negligible."
Researchers at the Falls, Balance and Injury Research Centre at NeuRA now plan to trial further environments such as city streets and bush paths and use a low-cost VR treadmill system for better clinical feasibility. They are currently running a trial to examine longer-term effects in people living with Parkinson's disease.
"We hope this VR obstacle avoidance training will complement existing evidenced based strength and balance exercises to prevent falls, and associated serious injuries in older people," Dr Okubo said.
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