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REAL LIFE NEWS: DOCTORS USE WII BALANCE BOARD

by Hazed

So we have computer games giving you rickets, and offices generally making you unhealthy, but here's a story where technology is helping. Unlike the Wii Fit, which according to the previous story doesn't do you much good, doctors are making use of the Wii balance board to diagnose problems.

Nintento's Balance Board peripheral allows players to control games by moving their bodies - for example, steering a surfboard. This makes it an ideal tool to assess patients' ability to balance. There are high-tech force platforms which doctors can purchase for this purpose but they are very expensive, heavy and in short supply, so the cheap balance board could really fill a gap.

Doctors from the University of Melbourne and Singapore General Hospital's Department of Physiotherapy together tested the BB by asking 30 people to perform single- and double-leg upright balance tests with their eyes open or closed. The Wii was connected to a laptop and its readings for center of pressure (COP), which help doctors to assess if a patient is stable when standing up, were generally found to be as good as those produced by force platforms, if a little less sensitive to very slight movements.

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