Timocco unveils latest therapeutic gaming technology

TIMOCCO INC. CEO Eran Arden shows Mia Izzi Pirotto how to use the company’s latest therapeutic gaming technology that allows users to practice more complex hand and wrist movements while playing games online. The game used motion-based technology to track the movements for children with special needs. Timocco has been testing the game with students and staff at Providence’s Meeting Street school as well as with faculty from Brown University and Hasbro Children’s Hospital. / COURTESY TIMOCCO INC.
TIMOCCO INC. CEO Eran Arden shows Mia Izzi Pirotto how to use the company’s latest therapeutic gaming technology that allows users to practice more complex hand and wrist movements while playing games online. The game used motion-based technology to track the movements for children with special needs. Timocco has been testing the game with students and staff at Providence’s Meeting Street school as well as with faculty from Brown University and Hasbro Children’s Hospital. / COURTESY TIMOCCO INC.

PROVIDENCE – Timocco Inc., which has developed an online skills development therapeutic gaming platform for special needs children, recently unveiled more technology that allows children to practice more complex hand and wrist movements while playing.

Based in Akron, Ohio, Timocco said the new motion-based technology features controllers and games.

The announcement was made at Meeting Street, which works with more than 4,000 children and families annually, offering early intervention and early Head Start, among other programs.

The staff and students at Meeting Street played a “pivotal role” in the creation and testing of the new technology, which allows patients to practice and develop supination and pronation, motions that allow one’s hand to be oriented, according to information from Timocco.

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Eran Arden, Timocco’s CEO, said the platform is available worldwide, and has thousands of users around the globe.

It cost more than $2 million to develop the platform, and was partially supported by a grant from the BIRD Foundation, an organization that promotes research and development in industries that benefit both Israel and the U.S.

The grant allowed Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Brown University, and Meeting Street to work together to develop and research Timocco’s web-based therapeutic game platform for children with physical challenges, including those in wheelchairs and with spastic cerebral palsy or other motor and cognitive disabilities.

Arden, in an email, explained that supination and pronation are at the core of most of our daily activities.
“We cannot eat, drink or dress independently without sup/pro, but motivating kids and adults to practice supination and pronation is a challenging task,” he wrote, adding Timocco’s mission is to turn that “demanding practice” into a fun and engaging activity.
He said the latest platform will be available mid-2017, and will be mainly used by occupational and physical therapists in clinics, schools and hospitals. It is the latest addition to the more than 50 games the company already offers online.

“This is another step toward realizing our dream to make Timocco accessible to millions of children with special needs worldwide who can benefit from these games as an affordable therapeutic supplement,” Arden said in a statement. “Timocco’s games mean children can develop vitally important core skills at home, saving time, money and effort for families.”

A research project member, J.J. Trey Crisco, professor of orthopedics at Brown University and head of a bioengineering laboratory affiliated with the university and Rhode Island Hospital, said the technology is important because it motivates therapy through play, and does so in a way that’s cost effective. Physical therapy, while a critical part of addressing upper extremity impairments, typically is “boring” and limited to sessions at the clinic, Crisco explained.

“All studies support the concept that the more therapy, the better the outcome,” Crisco wrote in an email, adding that gaming is a “great approach to providing more therapy.”
Arden said the platform is continuing to be tested and piloted, and any clinic, school or hospital that would like to join can contact the team at the bioengineering lab at Brown to join.

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