A preliminary study of outfitted functions with principles of captology for maintaining motivation of patients with complex regional pain syndrome

This article discusses the potential of Captology, a concept of the persuasive technologies, for long-term rehabilitation. Continuous rehabilitations to patients with chronic regional pain syndrome are an essential way to ameliorate the pain. Although the effects on a patient diminish when suspending the rehabilitation, he/she often feels resigned to keep it. Interference factors against the rehabilitation consist of difficulties to recognize the effects from the rehabilitation, interminable and repetitive rehabilitation, and complicated processes involving data collection for providing quality amelioration. Captology is one of promising concepts to solve these problems. We developed a set of functions with four principles from Captology, that is, Praise, Reduction, Tunneling and Self-Monitoring, into the system named VR/MVF for the sake of maintaining patient’s motivation. One of the significant functions was developed to apply the principle of Praise. The system displays messages of praising/scolding to notice appropriate/ inappropriate behaviors to him/her. The principles of Reduction and Tunneling were applied to reduce the burden of the system use. Tracking medical records by the principle of Self-Monitoring was employed to indicate the effects of rehabilitation to the patient.