Restore Skills motivates skilled nursing patients with gamified therapy solution
In a pandemic when skilled nursing facilities are providing therapy sessions within patients’ rooms, one company is perfectly positioned to help SNFs tackle this challenge.
Restore Skills, led by CEO Eran Arden and Chief Clinical Officer Ian Oppel, developed a gamified therapy skill-building solution for skilled nursing facilities. Their platform featuring 200 games operates on any laptop with a webcam. Players control the games by moving their arms and hands, transitioning from sitting to standing, or shifting their balance side to side. While a webcam tracks their movements, users get so busy playing games that they often forget they’re in therapy.
“All you need is a simple laptop, and it helps therapists motivate patients to develop skills, participate in a longer activity and reach for more by playing more,” says Arden.
Games keep patients motivated by making therapy sessions fun
Therapists have always known that making therapy fun motivates patients. Restore makes this easier. One of the platform’s most popular games is a slot machine, which the Restore team developed based on client feedback. Arden says a facility in Denver, Colorado asked, “Look, if you want our patients to practice up and down movements with their arms or legs, can you develop a slot machine?”
Restore games also support video conferencing so that family members, who may not be able to visit their loved ones in the pandemic, can join therapy sessions virtually.
Recently, Restore introduced Restore Together, a feature that allows multiple players to compete on a leaderboard. While SNFs are struggling to creatively provide engaging opportunities for safe socializing, Restore can keep patients active and interactive. The multiplayer feature allows patients to play games with a relative off-site as well, as long as they have a laptop with a webcam.
Arden says his team is seeing Restore Skills keep families connected while motivating patients at the same time. “Suddenly you want to participate in therapy for 20 minutes and not for five. Your standing tolerance is now three minutes and not one because you are engaged with a family member, or you can play with other team members in a facility.”
Skilled nursing is a market ripe for innovation and technology solutions
While Restore Skills is a timely solution for SNFs trying to creatively and effectively provide skill-building therapy in every patient’s room, Arden says he and his team recognized SNF therapy could improve long before the pandemic. “When I started Restore, I saw a market that needs more innovative and digital ways to engage patients, save the data and provide a better patient experience.”
Arden adds that the pandemic accelerated the technology and innovation trajectories in healthcare in ways that will continue to support patients and SNFs. “These are tools that can help us extend therapy and skill-building beyond the gym so that a patient doesn’t need to wait 24 hours for the next session.”
As a gaming platform, Restore helps to support skill-building, but it doesn’t replace the job of the therapist. Instead, Restore helps patients find more motivation to succeed in therapy in a way that no balloon or cone activity can do.
Therapists are key to their patients’ success, but they are also key to the success of technology innovation like Restore. Arden says, “Change will not happen just because people like us wake up every morning with motivation to make therapy a better place. We can’t do it without the help of the therapists in the market. Therapists can provide a much better patient experience by helping us with feedback for developing more games and activities.”
Following are ways Restore is supporting SNF therapy teams and their patients
- Therapists can reduce refusals because patients are more motivated for therapy sessions
- Therapists can support skill-building activities with limited space and equipment in patients’ rooms
- Patients can play multiplayer games to socialize with other patients and connect with loved ones
- Therapists can track data and progress within the platform
- Patients can access Restore Skills outside of therapy sessions and post-discharge as well
- Therapists and SNFs can use success stories from Restore Skills games on social media and in marketing material
Arden is confident that the technology and innovation happening now in therapy is only just beginning.
“I think that the way therapy is today will be totally different than five years from now. I believe that you will see patients have the ability to practice on their own or practice with a lower cost of personnel in the facility and that everything will be measurable and adjusted to meet patients’ specific needs. And I think that it’s an amazing future for all of us because we are all aging.”
Find out more about Restore Skills platform here.