PLAYING special video games can help older people improve their balance and be less vulnerable to falls, researchers have found.
A joint project involving academics from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and Trinity University Dublin found that older people’s balance and gait was improved by playing on the Nintendo Wii balance board.
And yesterday Professor Cathy Craig from QUB gave a live demonstration of the games and their benefits at the W5 centre in Belfast.
Prof Craig said: “This is a nice example of how older and young people can play together for better health. If you can improve balance then this reduces falls among older people and this in turn will reduce NHS costs.”
The balance board looks like a large set of bathroom scales and is stable to stand on.
But it has built-in sensors which detect how someone standing on it may shift their weight around.
“So you can calculate by the person shifting their position on the board how they are trying to move an object within a video game,” said Prof Craig.
“For example we have one game where they have to move their weight in order to move a basket around and catch apples falling off a tree on the screen.
“They are not thinking of their balance when they are playing, they are more engrossed in the game.”
The games the researchers are using have been specially developed for their experiment, but they are hoping to make them commercially available.
Talks are beginning with a Belfast software development company, Weeman Studios.
“We looked at the games that were already commercially available but they didn’t map the player’s movements in the way we needed,” Prof Craig said.
“A lot of them are far too difficult for older people, as often their reactions are too slow and the games are too difficult.”
The research involved 40 elderly people in Belfast and Dublin, and was funded by the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI).
Participants did 10 sessions on the Wii balance board over three or four months while a control group did not use the equipment.
“There was found to be a 15 per cent improvement in those using the board, particularly in their lateral balance but also in forward and backward balance too,” said Prof Craig.
But what of those older people who might scoff at the idea of trying such a game?
“Just give it a try for a laugh,” she said. “George Bernard Shaw said ‘We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing’.”
The researchers said that around 300 older people die from falls on the island of Ireland each year and that many thousands are injured, often seriously. Suffering a fall can damage an older person’s confidence, reduce their mobility and lead to isolation and loneliness, they said, and the economic cost of fractures and falls to health and social services is estimated to be over E400 million a year in the Republic alone.
The costs associated with falls are predicted to increase sharply as the population ages, they added.
Yesterday’s launch was chaired by Age NI CEO Anne O’Reilly and included a live demonstration of people playing the games devised by the research team. Other speakers included Kate Lesslar, from the College of Occupational Therapists, and Dr Katie Sheehan, clinic physiotherapist, TRIL (Technology Research for Independent Living).
Prof Craig has also done work for Ulster Rugby in using computer-based virtual reality to train players in deceptive movement, decision-making and defence.