If you know me, you’ll know how excited I am about innovation in healthcare, and how privileged I feel when given the opportunity to integrate it into my business endeavors to help people. As it happens, rehabilitation technology is advancing rapidly in ways that would astound you. The Allure Group has been a market leader in past ventures that seek to bring our residents the best new technology out there, and this space has proven extremely promising. From robotics to VR, technologies that appear straight out of science-fiction books are providing real results for real seniors, and we couldn’t be happier to facilitate their use!
One piece of equipment we’re particularly proud of is OmniVR, the first rehabilitation system designed to accommodate the needs of aging adults and medically complex patients. The technology, which is intuitive for patients of varying ages and abilities to use, uses an advanced 3D camera and specialized computer software to track patients’ movements and allow them to interact in a virtual world.
The system provides users with skilled exercise programs that assist in physical, occupational, and speech therapy applications that research has found patients enjoy and are motivated by. Due to its ease of use and enjoyment by patients, they exercise harder and longer, causing treatment outcomes to equal or exceed what’s accomplished by traditional methods alone.
For patients with physical limitations, the OmniVR can help improve functionality in a fun and rewarding way based on evidence-based literature. It also better allows outcomes to be measured by providing Outcomes Measurement Tests and Training Summaries to document progress made and other notes. Skills honed with the OmniVR are easily transferable to the real world, but in a safe environment where patients can overcome fear and push beyond boundaries.
Software includes activities like “sit and stand” bingo, which gradually introduces more difficult motions to an animated bingo board, and “stop the wolf,” which trains forward and backwards motions, cognition, and reaction time, as patients follow visual clues to block a virtual wolf from a virtual sheep.
The Allure Group currently offers OmniVR at our Bedford Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Brooklyn NY, alongside other technologies like our AlterG anti-gravity treadmill and Scottcare heart monitoring system. I’m proud to offer them to our residents, and even more excited to further the adoption of unique, effective technologies by eldercare efforts by and large.