What a way to start a Monday morning as Fran and Nicky took a morning out of Case Management to attend a Virtual Reality Open Day at BASIC – Brain and Spinal Injury Centre.
The aim of the morning was to look at the services offered to children, young people and adults with neurological injury or conditions at BASIC. These include a specialist treatment using CAREN, the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment.
CAREN is one of the Gold Standards of Rehabilitation used for Brain Injury, Cognitive and Spinal Injury Rehab, and numerous other conditions. CAREN is a virtual reality environment that provides real time cognitive feedback to patients, it can be used to work on balance, individual or groups of muscles as part of a rehabilitation programme.
The day included a tour of the unit, and our two case managers were able to see CAREN in action, before trying out another couple of machines on the unit.
Fran tested out the DYNstable (Dynamic Stability and Balance Learning Environment), an innovative piece of equipment that uses virtual reality, to assess and improve balance through training applications.
Meanwhile Nicky tried out the C-Mill, a dynamic learning environment to improve walking patterns and balance using an interactive treadmill.
Both Nicky and Fran reported the morning was a very positive experience with an array of machines and techniques used in BASIC to assist in the rehabilitation of brain injury and other patients
