Virtual Reality technology to aid stroke patients

An excerpt from an article in the ScienceDaily.com about recent VR application to brain damage rehab (Mar 11 2008).

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Israeli hospitals have recently started to use virtual reality therapy for stroke patients.
One commonly used program has the patient watch his virtual image on a screen. For example, tennis balls are virtually thrown at the patient from all directions and the patients' actual hand motions are recorded on screen.
With the new program, the computer "learned" to differentiate between different types of brain injuries: cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). During further testing, the computer was able to accurately diagnose, between 90%-98% of the time, whether the patient was healthy, or had suffered a traumatic brain injury or a stroke.
However, diagnosis is the most basic part of treatment - any doctor and many healthcare workers can correctly diagnose severe brain injuries. While this study is an important advance in the field of computer science, it will not directly help society. What is important, however, is the next phase of development, in which the computer is able to do things that doctors cannot.
For example, the computer can simulate how the patient will respond if the virtual reality therapy throws more balls to the patient's left side than to the right or if any other change would be beneficial for rehabilitation. The computer can quickly examine tens of different possibilities in a very short time. Using the computer will help avoid spending time on treatments that will not benefit the patient, or worse, cause harm.