The Glasgow School of Art

Research Themes
Health & Wellbeing

Research Staff
Prof Alastair Macdonald (Principal Investigator)

Partner Organisations
University of Strathclyde’s Bioengineering Unit
Glasgow Caledonian University’s School of Engineering & Computing

Funding
Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW)

Envisage was a research project concerned with promoting independence by involving users in their rehabilitation through the use of visual methods. 

It was a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde’s Bioengineering Unit, The Glasgow School of Art’s School of Design, Glasgow Caledonian University’s School of Engineering & Computing, and a number of other partner institutions and organisations.

It ran from January 2010 to October 2013 and was funded by Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW), a cross-research council initiative in partnership with the UK health departments and led by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

This was a qualitative study of the use of motion capture visualisation software in stroke rehabilitation. The qualitative process was integrated with randomised control trials exploring the effectiveness of the use of visualisation software on quantitative outcome measures in three areas of stroke rehabilitation (upper limb, lower limb and Ankle Foot Orthosis tuning).

Qualitative methods were adopted in four key phases of the trial - intervention design, pre-trial, during and post-trial phases. The views and perspectives of stroke survivors and health professionals involved in their care were explored using a mix of face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions. 

The findings from this study suggest that visualisation software can be used in the context of stroke rehabilitation and be beneficial to both patients and therapists. The findings identified that, through the visualisations, patients better understood the key aspects of their rehabilitative tasks. An interactive rehabilitation environment was created whereby both patient and therapist were able to communicate and discuss key issues and progress, which influenced their motivation to continue and engage with their rehabilitation.