Wii Fit used for physical therapy

Video games and fitness have never really gone hand in hand, and it has only been in the past few years that game developers have recognized that there is a small (but growing) demand for games that involve physical activity. Nintendo has been one of the first to try and capitalize on this with Wii Fit, and though the benefits of it are still in the air and still arguable, there's no doubt that it's the start of something much bigger. In what can be seen as supporting evidence of that, a hospital in the UK has decided to make Wii Fit part of a rehabilitation routine for people in physical therapy.

Specifically, a hospital in England has been using Wii Fit sessions as a way to help people learn how to make use of prosthetic limbs, claiming that the balance board helps people understand how to control a replacement limb better and retain balance. This certainly seems like a unique approach to physical therapy, but one that makes sense. Hand-eye coordination improvement and video game use have gone together for a long time, according to many sources, and using video games would certainly be a more engaging way to train people.

While this may be limited to a single hospital at the moment, it wouldn't be surprising in the least to see similar endeavors all over the world. Every generation of video games has become more interactive and more engaging. Perhaps the stereotype of gamers as unfit will be dispelled because of this.