From wickedlocal.com:

Videogames aren’t just for bored couch potatoes anymore and one interactive gaming system may just be the key to a Brookline firefighter returning to work.

Monday, April 16, 2007: Owen Thompson, a Billerica resident, rushed into a burning house wearing nearly 90 pounds of equipment. He never imagined the fire would leave him out of work for more than six months while he received extensive physical therapy and surgeries.

“I had an entire ceiling fall on me,” said Thompson. “After the fire was out we were clearing the ceiling and wall to ensure there was no hidden fire and trying to take down the second floor ceiling and the ceiling all of a sudden let go. They literally had to come with axes and saw me out. I sustained [damage] to the hard cartilage in the rear of my [knee cap]. Part of it actually sheared off.”

…

Just prior to beginning her work with Thompson, Brinklow and the clinic had caught word of a new alternative exercise treatment for patients that was proven to improve their strength and entertain them at the same time, the Nintendo Wii gaming system. While the Wii is already a popular tool for geriatric patients inside assisted living facilities and senior centers across the country, the videogame is now all the rage as a therapeutic tool for stroke, pediatric and orthopedic patients.

Source

From spectrum.ieee.org (via slashdot.org):

Rehabilitation specialists have taken to Nintendo’s Wii game console as a way to help motivate patients during physical therapy and rehabilitation. The latest addition to the Wii-hab phenomenon is perhaps its coolest—Air Guitar Hero. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have made the popular Guitar Hero game into a tool for amputees who are being fitted with the next generation of artificial arms. With a few electrodes and some very powerful algorithms, amputees can hit all the notes of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” using only the electrical signals from their residual muscles.

Source

From asianweek.com:

At 66 years young and still recovering from a recent spinal surgery, Marsha Stevens may not seem like the typical gamer. But on a recent morning, she gingerly stepped out of her wheelchair and onto the rectangular white balance board of the Wii Fit and cued up her favorite game, Table Tilt. She slowly shifted her body left and right to gently maneuver the balls into the hole on the screen. “C’mon, go in,” she even yelled at one point.

Stevens is one of more than 200 patients at St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco who have benefited from the Wii-Habilitation program, which uses the Nintendo Wii video console to help patients recovering from sustained various neurological injuries. “The difference between this and other treatments I’ve had is that I look forward to this,” Stevens said. “I feel no pain when I’m playing. I become so focused on the game that I can relax. Every hospital should have a Wii!”

Source

From thepaper24-7.com:

“For patients who have suffered a stroke or a serious traumatic injury, physical therapy is a likely and often feared step in the recovery process.

St. Clare Medical Center is taking a novel approach to physical therapy by integrating the popular Nintendo Wii gaming system into its rehabilitation regime. They call it “Wii-hab.”"

Read more…

From dailymail.com:

“The Cross Lanes resident, whose circulation and balance problems have disabled her, visited MedCare Therapy Center in Cross Lanes this summer to help her become steadier on her feet.

She’s one of the first patients to use the Wii as part of her therapy. Adding the game system to the clinic’s repertoire of equipment was the brainchild of David Briscoe, the physical therapist who owns MedCare, and he’s dubbed it “Wii-Hab.”

For the uninitiated, the Nintendo game system is different from others in that players, holding a wand about the size of a TV remote controller, actually mimic the movements of the game they are playing, rather than push buttons as they do on traditional game sets.”

Read more…