What if your gym routine consisted of gliding across a forest, skewing fruits like a ninja, or racing on a Formula 1 track?
That’s the vision behind Hiro, a Waterloo-based startup that is gamifying physiotherapy exercises for children with disabilities — by including people with disabilities at the research’s core.
Children with disabilities typically visit a physiotherapist and replicate their exercises at home to support their mobility. Unfortunately, some children may find these at-home activities challenging, leading to low motivation to complete them.
“These exercises can be boring, repetitive, and physically exhausting, when all kids want to do is play,” says Hiro’s co-founder Tamer Shahin. “We want to make physiotherapy more engaging, so the child is asking for it instead of seeing it as a chore.”