A Caledonia, Ont., woman who lost most of the movement in her head and neck after cancer treatment is now doing her physiotherapy through a pair of augmented reality glasses, The Globe and Mail reports. Annette Bullen, 59, was diagnosed in 2023 with mucoepidermoid carcinoma, a rare head and neck cancer; surgeries and radiation left her with severe stiffness and difficulty eating. Her physiotherapist pointed her to the Augmented Reality Integrated Sensorimotor Exercise platform, known as ARISE, which overlays virtual objects onto the user's real surroundings and coaches them through exercises with live feedback.
Bullen spends roughly 15 minutes a day on the exercises, using head and neck movements to steer a virtual orb along a spiral path. She told the newspaper the routine has widened her range of motion, and that being able to run it anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection — her parents' home in Watford, Ont., her son's place in Durham, Ont., even a trip to Mont-Tremblant in Quebec — has kept her going. Her children have taken to calling her Maverick, after Tom Cruise's Top Gun character, because of the Ray-Ban-style glasses.
Why it matters
Physiotherapists have long known that the hardest part of rehabilitation is not the exercise itself but doing it consistently, often alone, over months. ARISE is one of a growing group of wearable AR tools moving into physiotherapy and rehabilitation care, with uses spanning mobility, balance and fall prevention for older adults.
The stakes are high for that last category. The Public Health Agency of Canada identifies falls as the top cause of injury-related hospital stays for people 65 and older, and estimated the cost of fall injuries in that age group at $5.6-billion in 2018, according to The Globe and Mail. Xiru Wang, a neurophysiology PhD student at McMaster University who is studying the issue with the platform, said the numbers represent people who may become reluctant to leave home, pull back from their communities or doubt whether they can keep living on their own.
From a PhD project to clinic-bound product
Stevie Foglia, founder and CEO of Neuro-Mod Inc., the McMaster-based health technology company in Hamilton, Ont., that built ARISE, began the work in 2022 as a way to treat chronic neck pain during his doctoral studies. He runs the company with Dr. Aimee Nelson and Dr. Harsha Shanthanna.
Foglia told The Globe and Mail that his team tested the approach with older adults and saw meaningful gains in mobility, function and pain. Patients then asked for help with other problems, particularly balance and fall prevention, which led the company to build game-like training routines that work on posture, mobility and centre of balance. Users can review their own data, and the system links to clinicians so therapists can follow progress from a distance.
The choice of AR over virtual reality was deliberate. Foglia said he began with VR but found participants experienced nausea and vertigo when placed inside a fully simulated space, and that AR reduced those effects. He added that people in his first study asked to keep receiving the treatment after it ended — a signal, he said, that the technology needed to reach more people. That has pushed Neuro-Mod to work on getting ARISE into physiotherapy clinics as well as continuing its research.
Anita Gross, an associate clinical professor in McMaster's School of Rehabilitation Sciences and the physiotherapist who introduced Bullen to the platform, said motivation is a common obstacle to sticking with a prescribed rehabilitation plan. Repetitive mobility work can be dull, she told the newspaper, but turning it into a game with target scores makes it more enjoyable.
A field colliding with an aging population
Allison Sekuler, a neuroscientist and president and chief scientist at the Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation at Baycrest in Toronto, described the current period as the most exciting of her career, pointing to AR, VR, artificial intelligence, robotics and sensors converging in research and care. She noted that an aging population is meeting these tools at the same moment, producing innovations aimed at supporting older adults.
Sekuler said she does not rank one technology above another, since the right choice depends on the task, but she sees particular promise in AR because it layers useful information onto the user's surroundings instead of cutting them off from those surroundings the way virtual reality does.
For Bullen, the practical benefit is simple: the exercises fit into her life rather than requiring a trip to a clinic. Foglia and Wang are now recruiting participants for a study on AR training for balance and mobility, and Neuro-Mod's stated next step is wider deployment in physiotherapy clinics — a rollout worth watching as evidence on fall prevention accumulates.
