VRFCAT
A game based application for measuring and enhancing a patient's functional capacity during schizophrenia treatment.
Client:
NeuroCog Trials
Developer:
Virtual Heroes
Platform:
Unreal Engine 2.5
Release Date:
January 2011
About
Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that impacts a person's ability to enage with the world, maintain interpersonal relationships, and perform basic daily tasks. Numerous pharmaceutical companies initiated programs to develop new antipsychotic drugs, but they may be stalled by the absence of reliable measures of the clinical meaningfulness of cognitive change.
The Virtual Reality Functional Capacity Assessment Tool (VRFCAT) is an immersive simulation developed in collaboration with subject matter experts from NeuroCog Trials in order to close this gap. The patient engages in simple daily activities, such as grocery shopping and public transportation usage, and progresses through various challenges in a game environment.
VRFCAT is played from a first-person perspective utilizing a fixed camera view and an easily accessible user interface that takes into account varying levels of literacy, video game experience, and cognitive deficiencies. The players follow on-screen directions and are allowed to interact with objects and the environment in order to accurately mimic real world activities.
During a play session, players are evaluated and provived with postive or negative feedback based on their ability to perform the requested tasks. After each mini-scenario is completed, the overall performance can be reviewed from locally stored data.
Gallery
Press Coverage
- Innovative technologies expedite cognition drug development
December 2016 ~ Research Features