Apps and online resources for stroke patients

Apps list (please note that not all of these apps are free)

 

 

Balance and exercise

Clock Yourself

Designed by an Australian physiotherapist, this app helps you “think faster on your feet.” The app introduces progressively complex activities to help you react more quickly with your body. This can be especially helpful for stroke patients who lack balance and coordination and therefore are at a heightened risk of falling. 

Sitfit exercise app

Seated exercise programme with 3 levels of difficulty. Gentle overall exercise, fitness and stretching. Videos to follow along.

SitFit Exercise on the App Store (apple.com)

Rehabit

This is an app that aims to help you create wellness habits. It provides a habit tracker, habit suggestions, a journal, active learning resources and home exercise videos.

Rehabit: brain recovery habits on the App Store (apple.com)

Rehabit: brain recovery habits - Apps on Google Play

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Cognition

Lumosity

Cognitive games to challenge memory, speed, logic, problem solving, maths & language

Lumosity: Brain Training on the App Store (apple.com)

Lumosity: Brain Training - Apps on Google Play

Happy Neuron

Computer programme brain training method to stimulate the 5 main cognitive functions: memory, attention, language, executive functions, and visual spatial skills.

 Two programmes: ‘wellness’ and ‘performance’, depending on level of challenge desired. Personalised based on cognitive profiling. 

Constant Therapy

Speech therapy app for people recovering from stroke, traumatic brain injury, or who have aphasia, dementia and other speech-language disorders. The app can improve speech, language, cognition, memory, reading, attention and comprehension skills with 65 categories of tasks, over 60,000 stimuli, and 10 difficulty levels.

Constant Therapy: Brain Rehab on the App Store (apple.com)

Constant Therapy: Brain Rehab - Apps on Google Play

Peak

Free brain games and puzzles to challenge memory, attention, maths, problem solving, mental agility, language, coordination, creativity and emotion control.

Peak - Brain Training on the App Store (apple.com)

Peak – Brain Games & Training - Apps on Google Play

Matrix Game 3

Helps develop visual perception skills such as visual discrimination. It also helps develop attention and concentration, spatial orientation, principles of classification and categorization and executive functions such as planning and perseverance.

Matrix Game 3 on the App Store (apple.com)

Wordsearch

Wordsearches to work on cognitive and visual skills

Sudoku

Learn and improve Sudoku skills; good for cognition & vision. 

Sudoku: Number Match Game - Apps on Google Play

Sudoku on the App Store (apple.com)

Elevate 

Helps to improve cognitive function through educational games. Includes games that work on memory, comprehension, and processing skills. The app allows you to progress the difficulty level as your skills improve to continue challenging your brain. As a result, you can continue to improve your skills and sharpen your cognitive abilities.

Elevate - Brain Training Games - Apps on Google Play

Elevate - Brain Training Games on the App Store (apple.com)

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Vision

AbilityNet

They are a company that supports disabled people to use technology.

The link goes to a fact sheet where there is a list of various apps that you may find useful. 

Vision-impairment-and-Computing-Easy-Read-Accessible.pdf

Visual Attention Therapy

Helps people with visuospatial neglect improve scanning abilities using traditional cancellation exercises.

Visual Attention Therapy on the App Store (apple.com)

Visual Attention Therapy - Apps on Google Play

Attention Test

Available on Google Play;  provides classic test of visual attention. Choose between 4 levels of complexity.

What’s the difference? Spot it!

Helps to improve attention and visual scanning. The app challenges you to identify small differences between otherwise-identical pictures.

What's the Difference? Spot It on the App Store (apple.com)

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Arm recovery

Dexteria

Designed to rehabilitate finger and hand movement. It provides exercises for patients to follow in their own homes and at their own speed. 3 main games work on pincer grip and finger movement.

Dexteria - Fine Motor Skills on the App Store (apple.com)

Hand therapy

Enables therapist to indicate which exercises they recommend to their patients and how often to do them. Helps patients’ comprehension and motivation to do their exercises. The app has a reminder function, allowing the therapist or patient to set a reminder to do the exercise at a prescribed interval throughout the day.

Hand Therapy on the App Store (apple.com)

Hand Therapy - Apps on Google Play

Orientate

Provides images of hands and feet in different positions and postures, on nine levels, totalling over one thousand five hundred images. Helps to retrain the brain to see and recognize the missing hemisphere and aid the remapping of the brain.

Orientate - Apps on Google Play

Orientate - Pain Management on the App Store (apple.com)

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Mood

Virtual Hope Box

A smartphone application designed for use by patients as an accessory to treatment. The VHB contains simple tools to help patients with coping, distraction, positive thinking and relaxation (including guided imagery, controlled breathing and muscle relaxation). VHB content can be personalised on the patient's own smartphone according to the patient's specific needs. 

Virtual Hope Box on the App Store (apple.com)

Virtual Hope Box - Apps on Google Play

Headspace

Guided meditation and mindfulness exercises & techniques.

Headspace: Sleep & Meditation on the App Store (apple.com)

Headspace: Meditation & Sleep - Apps on Google Play

Breathe2Relax

A portable stress management tool which provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body and instructions and practice exercises to help users learn the stress management skill called diaphragmatic breathing.

Breathe2Relax on the App Store (apple.com)

Breathe2Relax - Apps on Google Play

Calm

Relaxation, meditation and mindfulness exercises to reduce stress & anxiety and improve sleep.

Calm: Sleep & Meditation on the App Store (apple.com)

Calm - Sleep, Meditate, Relax - Apps on Google Play

Simple Habit

An app for meditation, mindfulness and stress relief. Meditations last from 5 to 20 minutes and you can specify what situation or mood you’re in. Good for people new to meditation.

Simple Habit: Meditation - Apps on Google Play

Simple Habit Sleep, Meditation on the App Store (apple.com)

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Medication, health and support 

Medisafe

Provides medication reminders & health tracking information: can add alerts for carers/ family if medication is not taken and gives reminders for re-ordering medication. Allows addition of health related measurements such as blood pressure & weight.

Medisafe Pill Reminder on the App Store (apple.com)

Medisafe Pill & Med Reminder - Apps on Google Play

My Therapy

A similar app for medication reminders and health monitoring.

Mytherapy medication reminder on the App Store (apple.com)

My Stroke Guide

A site created and maintained by the Stroke Association to provide information and advice on stroke recovery, life after stroke and how to live well after a stroke. You can also get community support by joining the online forum, and keep up to date by subscribing to pages relevant to you, the My Stroke Guide Blog and YouTube channel.

The My Stroke Guide forum is an online community for stroke survivors, carers and health professionals. The forum operates on Discourse, an open-source forum based platform. It allows users to keep track of new and unread posts and notifications.

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Speech and language

Tactus Language Therapy

A speech therapy apps that give stroke survivors the intensive practice they need to get better.

These are the same professional tools that medical speech-language pathologists are using to provide effective rehabilitation in hospitals and clinics around the world.

Tactus Therapy: Speech Therapy Apps for Adults with Aphasia after Stroke

Bla | Bla| Bla

Bla Bla Bla is a sound reactive application for iPhone and iPad. This app derives from an exercise called “Parametric Mask”.

The exercise was part of a one-day workshop held in December 2010 at the design department of IUAV, in Venice, and in February 2011 at the ISIA of Urbino. The aim of the workshop, called “Procedures of Basic Design”, is to go beyond the classic exercises about shape and perception that characterize the Basic Design course.

These new exercises introduce the use of a programming language as a problem-solving tool, but the workshop itself is not focused on programming: the language is a tool, a way to use numbers, math and logic to show objectively how to solve a design problem. The course was aimed to first year students with no coding experience. The language used in workshop activities was Processing. The porting for iOs was written in Open Frameworks.

Bla | Bla | Bla on the App Store (apple.com)

Lingraphica TalkPath Therapy

‘TalkPath™ Therapy is Lingraphica's easy-to-use, integrated language and cognitive solution accessible online from a Web browser or online or offline on an iPad. With TalkPath Therapy, users can practice language and cognitive skills for free with more than 13,500 scientifically designed tasks in eight areas: news, speaking, reading, writing, listening, memory, reasoning, and daily living.’

Lingraphica TalkPath Therapy on the App Store (apple.com)

SmallTalkConversationalPhrases

‘SmallTalk Conversational Phrases provides a library of pictures you can tap that speak out loud. This includes common words and phrases like greetings, responses, requests, and statements on well-being. It’s perfect for conversing with friends, relatives, and others.

You can easily rearrange the order of the icons or remove others to make it simpler to focus on your most important messages. Then, reset the app to return to original settings.’

SmallTalkConversationalPhrases on the App Store (apple.com)

I Have Aphasia

‘The "I have Aphasia" app is designed to be used on your iPhone, iPod or iPad so you can inform people you meet about aphasia. It opens a short, animated film explaining Aphasia, which was produced by Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust with the Tap and Talk Aphasia iPad Group at the University of Dundee. The video is one and a half minutes long, short enough to show it and set the scene before a conversation. You have the choice of a male or a female voice to speak the movie text, you can stop the movie at any time, and you can share it using the controls within the app. All stop motion animations in the movie were created by the Tap and Talk Aphasia iPad Group during animation workshops. We hope this app will help you when you introduce yourself to people who don't know you and know little or nothing about aphasia. Please send us feedback and ideas using the feedback function of the app.’

The "I have Aphasia" App on the App Store (apple.com)

Speech Sounds on Cue

‘This application shows how to produce speech sounds and words and encourages speech, even in people with severe speech difficulties. This easy to use iPad application contains over 500 videos, sound clips and colour photos designed to help adults and children to produce the consonant speech sounds in isolation, in words and in sentences. Now includes recording, playback, rhyming words and randomisation.

This software is especially helpful to those who need to hear and see a sound made, for example, patients with motor speech difficulty due to speech apraxia (verbal or oral apraxia affecting speech).’

Speech Sounds on Cue (Aus Eng) on the App Store (apple.com)

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