An ASU alumnus and the College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation are using video games in a clinical trial to help stroke victims regain movement and mobility.

The Hand Mentor, a device that uses joystick-controlled video games to re-teach stroke patients basic mobility, is the product of Kinetic Muscles Inc., a Tempe-based company that started in 2001.

Kinetic Muscles co-founder, chief operating officer and electrical technology engineering graduate Ed Koeneman said the goal of the Hand Mentor is to retrain the brain, in a fun way, to function properly.

“When you have a stroke, it’s your brain that’s injured, not your body,” Koeneman said. “Your body is perfectly capable of moving normally; it’s retraining your brain to send your body the right signals that’s difficult.”

Koeneman said to retrain a brain takes thousands upon thousands of repetitions of the same motion, and for most people that can get very boring.

“We wanted to make these repetitions bearable,” he said. “We turned this idea into a game where patients are doing these repetitious motions to achieve something.”

The games range from basic Atari era Pong to navigating a hot-air balloon through an obstacle course, Koeneman said.

“As patients pass different check points in the game, the game gets a little tougher,” he said. “We are playing on that addictive nature of video games to keep the patients attention and retrain their brain.”

Patients put their arms in a sleeve with monitors that measure progress during game play. The sleeve measures everything from the patient’s range of motion to how long the patient played the game.

Past clinical trials were successful but were done at a physical therapist’s office, Koeneman said.

“We want people to be able to use the Hand Mentor at home so they don’t have to sit in a doctor’s office,” he said. “We want to prove that the Hand Mentor is just as affective at home, so health care providers will cover it.”

Linda Mottle, associate professor and director of the clinical trials research management program, said the patients enjoy the therapy.

“The patients are really liking the way this works,” she said. “Instead of having to sit in a physical-therapy office, they can get the same treatment while they watch television.”

Mottle said the nursing school teaches patients how to use the equipment, but the patients are primarily using the devices in their homes without the supervision of physical therapists.

The study will take about a year, she said, and over the course of the trial, patients will be monitored for improvement in their flexibility and mobility.

Mottle is looking for about 20 more patients to participate, but the criteria the stroke patient must meet are narrow because of a need for a control group for the study.

“We have stroke victims volunteering all the time,” Mottle said. “For the study, we need patients that had a stroke in the past year and have one arm immobilized. After the study, we can start including more stroke victims.”

Reach the reporter at jaking5@asu.edu.