PRODUCT
A New Dimension
in Rehabilitation
Welcome to a progressive virtual reality solution for both physical rehabilitation and pain management. Our VR system offers a range of exercises and environments tailored to individual needs, encompassing muscle strengthening, coordination improvement, and pain distraction techniques. This holistic approach ensures a comprehensive treatment plan that addresses both the physical and psychological aspects of recovery.
A MedTech solution
for fast recovery
Cyberful is our future-proof Digital Therapeutics (DTx) solution. As a treatment method, it offers engaging physical exercises necessary for the successful rehabilitation of upper limbs. There are multiple use cases for this kind of therapy, including post-injury rehabilitation, recovery from physical disability, and the alleviation of phantom limb pain.
How does
Cyberful work?
Cyberful is an App that that offers a fully immersive experience by utilising a commodity VR headset. It combines gamification strategies with the latest neuroscientific discoveries to help people go beyond physical limitations by implementing a variety of exercises, each tailored to the individual's specific needs. These range from muscle strengthening and coordination enhancement to innovative distraction techniques, altering pain perception. This comprehensive approach ensures a holistic treatment, targeting both the physical and psychological facets of recovery.
We believe in a future where advanced care is available to all. With Cyberful, we hope to serve individual needs for independent, accessible, and engaging rehabilitation and pain management. Our vision is to empower individuals to become their own healthcare managers! And Cyberful is how we aim to realise that vision.
Effective & Holistic Therapy
Transforms clinically established mirror therapy with the help of VR into holistic recovery that addresses both sensory and motor pathways - providing both functional restoration and remedy for pain.
Accessible
Digital deployment, off-the-shelf hardware. In contrast to SoA therapy, it can be applied whenever and wherever one wants. Empowering individuals to help themselves through individually tailored therapy.
Motivating & Engaging
Gamification enhances levels of patients engagement and motivation. Nudging and accountability - setting and reaching goals. Tracking performance & progress.
UNDERLYING MECHANICS OF MIRROR THERAPY
Changes in body representation occur after nerve injuries.
Brain recordings while performing movements show that a stronger reorganization leads to more pain.
The brain compares what it sees with what it feels. After giving an order, it expects a verification of execution.
Closing the open loop after nerve injury shows several benefits and helps in living a normal life.
FEATURES
Enhanced Targeted Hand Rehabilitation
Our program offers specialized exercises meticulously developed in collaboration with medical experts and endowed with precise hand-tracking technology. This approach facilitates targeted rehabilitation tailored to individual needs, enabling effective therapy from the comfort of home. Coupled with this, performance monitoring ensures a personalized and adaptive treatment plan, maximizing recovery efficiency.
Traditional mirror therapy employs a mirror placed at the affected individual body's midpoint, creating the illusion of two intact limbs. This technique is instrumental in helping individuals relearn to perceive and move their phantom limb, significantly reducing pain. By integrating this therapy with Virtual Reality, we extend its benefits to a home-based setting. This innovation allows individuals to access treatment at their convenience, enhancing comfort and adherence to therapy schedules.
Gamification, the incorporation of gaming elements into traditionally non-gaming environments, transforms rehabilitation into an engaging and enjoyable experience. This approach significantly boosts motivation, leading to better adherence to the rehabilitation regimen.
The portability of VR technology empowers individuals to perform their rehabilitation exercises at home, offering unprecedented convenience and accessibility. This self-therapy approach is particularly beneficial for those with mobility challenges or those who find regular visits to rehabilitation clinics difficult. By bringing therapy into the home, we ensure continuous, consistent rehabilitation, fostering quicker and more effective recovery.
Principles of Cyberful
Virtual Reality Therapy
Conventional rehabilitation usually involves therapy sessions supervised by healthcare professionals who guide affected individuals to perform specific exercises. This approach, however, has limitations in terms of scalability due to the need for specialized facilities and the direct involvement of healthcare staff, which restricts the number of individuals that can be treated simultaneously.
In response, we aimed to develop home-based technologies to allow individuals to carry out rehabilitation independently – anywhere, anytime. Using Virtual Reality (VR) technologies allows us to provide virtual guidance that is on par with that provided by real-life therapists.
Moreover, introducing game-like elements into non-gaming contexts (gamification) renders virtual therapy generally more enjoyable and significantly improves therapy engagement and adherence.
Upper Limb Rehabilitation
The hand is a remarkable evolutionary achievement, serving as a sophisticated tool for interacting with modern technologies. However, increased use also increases the risk of injuries, making hand injuries a common occurrence, especially in the workplace.
Conventional rehabilitation has limitations in terms of scalability due to the need for specialized facilities and the direct involvement of healthcare staff. Moreover, state-of-the-art physical rehabilitation is often monotonous and repetitive, leading to a decline in therapy adherence, which potentially results in extended recovery times and healthcare costs.
Cyberful’s VR solution provides an immersive and interactive environment specifically designed for the effective rehabilitation of hand injuries. Hand tracking allows close monitoring of the limb movements and offers adaptive, custom-tailored exercises. Using gamification, Cyberful not only aids physical recovery but also keeps individuals engaged and motivated, thus increasing therapy adherence and making rehabilitation more effective and user-friendly.
Neuropathic Pain
Current research explores restoring the disrupted sensorimotor loop. Sensory substitution, providing alternative feedback through intact senses or devices, aims to close the gap between expected and actual sensations for better sensorimotor integration.
The Central Nervous System (CNS) adapts to changes from peripheral nerves, affecting our sensation perception, movement control, and behavior. Peripheral Nerve Injury (PNI) prompts this adaptation, reorganizing the nervous system, including the spinal cord and brain areas. Studies since the 1980s reveal that the brain's body map can change following sensory loss from deafferentation or amputation. For example, in PNI, neurons originally linked to an amputated arm may later respond to facial inputs, leading to sensorimotor incongruence—a mismatch between expected and actual sensory feedback, causing pain and motor issues.
Cyberful provides realistic visual feedback in an immersive VR environment, and thus aligns the visual input with the brain's expectations. It helps retrain sensorimotor pathways, improving sensory and motor synchronization. Enhancing embodiment, similar to mirror therapy, Cyberful alleviates pain in individuals suffering from Phantom Limb Pain (PLP) or similar conditions.
Clinical Evidence behind Cyberful
During a three-month trial, participants noted improved pain quality and positive therapy experiences, with fMRI showing promising neural recovery.
The concept originates from a collaborative study conducted by the Medical University of Göttingen in Germany, in partnership with various academic and industrial entities.
Eight participants, six with brachial plexus injuries and two amputees, took part in a three-month VR therapy trial called PROMPT, the precursor to what has now evolved into Cyberful. Pain levels were meticulously tracked using the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) and Numeric Rating Scale (NRS). While pain intensity remained unchanged, there was a significant improvement in pain quality (p=0.016), indicating a reduction in discomfort. Participants reported positive experiences and expressed willingness to continue therapy, with moderate acknowledgment of the integration of the VR arm. Importantly, no adverse effects were reported. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) assessed neural effects and cortical reorganization. Analysis revealed significant cortical shifts in affected brain hemispheres post-therapy compared to pre-therapy, indicating restoration towards normal organization (p=0.031). This suggests VR therapy's potential in mitigating phantom limb pain (PLP) and promoting neural recovery.
Study Design
Study Outcomes
Eight subjects answered the McGill Pain Questionnaire (1) and the Numeric RatingScale (2) before and after the intervention. The pain quality decreased significantly after intervention (p=0.016).
Usage ratings. 6/8 subjects felt as if the VR arm was their own, 3/8 subjects reported that the affected arm felt different during therapy, 6/8 subjects wanted to continue using the product. None of the subjects experienced any side-effects.
Disparities between the healthy and affected hemisphere in the lip’s representation before and after the therapy. Before the therapy, these were significantly larger, indicating the lip's representation returning to normal (p=0.031).
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