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Prestigious tech award for team behind interactive VR rehab games

News posted
on 10 Dec 2024
by

Sheffield Hallam University’s Impact VR Lab, which leads pioneering virtual reality (VR) technology in healthcare to support amputees, burns victims and children with limb injuries to rehabilitate, has been recognised by the Prolific North Tech Awards.

The Impact VR team received the Tech for Good award and were also highly commended in the Best Health Tech Startup category at the awards ceremony.

The Impact VR Lab has developed immersive and interactive games which considerably improve the health, wellbeing and lifestyles of children and adults who have been affected by neurological and musculoskeletal conditions, orthopaedic trauma and chronic pain.  

The Impact VR team is currently developing games to help dysphagia patients, children diagnosed with the rare muscle-wasting disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), and to support cognitive behavioural therapy in children and young people with social anxiety (SAD).  

Ivan Phelan, Principal Research Fellow and Director of the Impact VR Lab at Sheffield Hallam University, said: “Everyone involved in Impact VR is honoured to have been awarded the Tech for Good award along with a highly commended Best Health Tech Startup award at the Prolific North Tech Awards. 

“This award is a testament to the team’s hard work and dedication. They have strived to create innovative and engaging solutions that improve patient care.

“This would not have been possible without the continued support, collaboration and contributions from Sheffield Hallam University as well as the amazing staff and patients from Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust who have been instrumental.”

The Prolific North Tech Awards celebrate the incredible innovation of the North’s tech sector – rewarding the organisations, teams and individuals contributing to the region’s growth.

The awards took place in Manchester on Thursday 28 November.

VR Prosthetics Activity Sheet 3: Solve It!

Resource posted
on 07 Dec 2017
by

Think about some of the challenges you might have if you have only one arm. Download the activity sheet for some activities to try to do, such as tying laces and wrapping a present:

Download

You can also download some wrapping paper to use in this exercise, featuring our mascot Pod!

VRP Teacher and Educator resources: Sporting Chance

Resource posted
on 07 Dec 2017
by

The second of two sets of Teacher and Educator activities created for the project, ‘Sporting Chance’ supports students in developing their data-handling skills, through looking at and interpreting graphical and other data to help to make better-informed decisions.

The activity supports aspects of enquiry at KS3 and KS4 science and is based around the context of what is perceived as ‘fair’ when competing in sport.

The context for the activity is based around exploring 3 sources:

Jon-Allan’s Story, available on the Living with Limb Loss page

VRP Sporting Chance Activity 1 – Professor Steve Haake’s blog article on Marcus Rehm, a Paralympic athlete keen to compete with able-bodied athletes.

VRP Sporting Chance Activity 2 & VRP Sporting Chance Activity 3 – Performance data. This includes women’s world records for the marathon, and personal best data for imaginary athletes, and considers the implications posed by such data.

Sporting Chance Performance rating cards

 

The materials have been developed with the support of the UTC2 Sheffield with thanks to the principal, Sarah Clarke; her teacher colleagues from across different curriculum areas, and most importantly input from over 100 students at UTC2 who have informed, tested and helped us to hone these activities.

VRP Teacher and Educator resources: Empathy

Resource posted
on 07 Dec 2017
by

Two sets of teaching and learning materials have been created, based around the three short films made for the VRP project. These materials make stimulating, thought-provoking contexts that can be used to generate purposeful student discussion from which to explore aspects of difference and ethical issues.

The first of these is titled ‘Empathy’, and is suitable for citizenship and PHSE lessons. It explores interesting questions around personal preferences.

The resources consider how different people who are missing their lower arm feel about their own situation. The activity can go on to form the basis for further exploring how students themselves like to be treated by others and would make the basis for a good start-of-year activity. They have been tested at Key stage 3, 4 and 5.

The three videos, Charlotte’s Story, Liz’s Story and Jon-Allan’s Story are available on the Living with Limb Loss page.

The accompanying activities are available to download below:

Teacher Notes Empathy and Understanding Limb Loss

VRP Empathy Activity 1

VRP Empathy Activity 2

VRP Empathy Activity 3

One armed activities sheet

wrapping paper

The materials have been developed with the support of the UTC2 Sheffield with thanks to the principal, Sarah Clarke; her teacher colleagues from across different curriculum areas, and most importantly input from over 100 students at UTC2 who have informed, tested and helped us to hone these activities.