Suddenly I was standing on a beautiful beach. In front of me was clear blue water as far as the eye could see. I was immediately overcome by a feeling of calm. There was just one problem. I wasn’t on the beach. I was standing in the middle of the new Immersive Rehabilitation Room at the Sheba Medical Center.
The Immersive Rehabilitation Room is an innovative space designed to enhance the therapeutic experience through advanced technology. The room features projectors and sensors that create an immersive environment by projecting images onto three walls and the floor. This facility offers an interactive experience for patients in rehabilitation
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Scenario “Sheba Gym”
(Photo: Integrated Rehabilitation Hospital, Sheba Medical Center)
“Although this particular room at Sheba was inaugurated just a month ago, the technology itself is not new,” said Maya Ehrlich, innovation coordinator at Sheba Integrated Rehabilitation Hospital and rehabilitation psychologist, as she transformed the beach scene into a forest, then a shopping mall, and finally into something called Sheba Gym, a fun rehab workout. “In fact, this type of room has already been used for educational purposes in about 60 schools across Israel. The technology belongs to a British company called Immersive, and we are working with their Israeli distributor, Totally Interactive.
“When we showed it to Prof. Amitai Ziv, the director of Sheba’s Integrated Rehabilitation Hospital, and Prof. Israel Dudkiewicz, the head of the department of Sheba’s Rehabilitation Hospital, they saw the potential and believed that it could be great for rehabilitation. To my knowledge, we at Sheba are the first, certainly in Israel and perhaps even in the world, to use this technology and apply it to the rehabilitation of adults aged 18 and over.”
“That’s true, for two main reasons. First, it is interactive and immersive. Thanks to the projectors and sensors, the room is transformed into a dynamic and engaging space, making therapy more stimulating and enjoyable for patients. The room is equipped with an interactive system that responds to patients’ movements and actions, encouraging them to actively participate in their rehabilitation process. A normal rehab session, for example, can often be repetitive and tiring, but in this room, that same session where the patient might push against the wall to prevent various balls projected onto the wall from falling is now a fun game.
“Secondly, it is part of an easy-to-use content creation system (Studio). It allows therapists and staff to design customized therapy sessions without the need for any programming knowledge. Teachers across Israel are already creating scenarios and using them. We want the same to happen here at Sheba Rehabilitation Hospital. We want to create a mechanism for physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and nurses so that all their ideas can become scenarios in this special space that will benefit the rehab patients.”
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A patient “catches” falling balls by knocking on the wall
(Photo: Integrated Rehabilitation Hospital, Sheba)
Was this space created before October 7?
“Yes, and I’m proud of that,” Ehrlich said. “At Sheba Rehabilitation, we’re always thinking about innovation, not just as a result of the war. People are getting injured and sick all the time. All the staff here are always thinking about how we can make Sheba a better rehabilitation hospital. But I have to say that the impact of October 7 and the war that followed helped us move this project forward much faster. There was an opportunity. We have a lot of young soldiers who were injured in the war and will benefit from this room as it will now become part of their rehab. It’s brand new, but the patients who are already using it want to come back and use it again and again. They enjoy it. Our art therapists are looking for new ways to help their patients and this room offers that too.”
How successful/popular has it been so far?
“Since it opened a month ago, this room has been very popular. Since this technology has been used in schools before, it already had hundreds of learning scenarios in it when we first trained Sheba’s rehab staff on it. We kept the most suitable ones and put them in folders for our staff to use even before we created new ones. For example, some scenarios are games that are very suitable for rehab, which may require patients to walk around the room. We use both public and private scenarios that we have created. An escape room scenario, for example, requires solving mental puzzles (cognitive) and physical activity. It can be for individual patients or for groups. It is also versatile. I can work with a patient on using their extremities while helping them overcome their fear of shopping in a mall (one scenario puts you in the middle of the Sheba mini-mall, patients can also enter stores and “buy” items that stay under a certain budget.”
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Maya Ehrlich
(Photo: David Scouri)
Sheba explained that the new immersive rehabilitation room has three goals:
1. Personalized therapy: Rehabilitation sessions are adapted to the needs of the patients, supporting their recovery process.
2. Improved engagement: Using immersive and interactive technologies to increase patient motivation and participation in therapy.
3. Expanded applications: Although this technology has so far been used mainly in the educational field, Sheba’s goal is to adapt and expand its application for therapeutic and rehabilitative purposes, especially for adult patients.
What else do you use the room for?
“For example, we can film a patient’s home in 360 degrees so they feel at home in Sheba. We have also created a scenario that shows a home and how it is prepared for the patient to return home. It is very effective to see it visually. We can potentially create any scenario you can imagine. We can use it for exposure therapy. If you have a fear of heights or a fear of flying, we can simulate it here to help you deal with it. With one click, we can bring the outside world here.”
What options are there besides rehabilitation?
“Sheba is committed to integrating the Immersive Rehabilitation Room into our broader therapy programs. This includes training our staff to use the technology effectively, continually updating and refining the content, and conducting ongoing research to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of immersion therapy. We also want to make this room accessible to people with PTSD and other needs. We also intend to do a lot of research here and see how the new scenarios we create work with patients. It’s always evolving.”
