More video games created for healthcare

I’ve written about the power of video games to help people take care of their health before (here). Here’s yet another testimony, this time in an article titled “Not Just Child’s Play” in 6 August 2006 issue of US News & World Report.

Welcome to the upside of computer games. Their legendary powers of distraction and ability to create synthetic worlds are turning one of the most popular--and disparaged--entertainment media into a promising and potentially powerful medical tool. Long derided as the enemy of health for transforming children into weapon-loving, overweight zombies, computer games are now proving effective for everything from reducing pain and managing chronic disease to treating post-traumatic stress disorder and promoting fitness and exercise. Although these so-called serious games are still in their infancy, there's a growing body of evidence backing their health-improvement claims. "Games can be extremely motivational and useful in therapeutic and medical settings," says Albert "Skip" Rizzo, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virtual Environments Lab at the University of Southern California. "There are a lot of researchers looking at this technology because it makes things fun, and it's very engaging."

Some specifics from the article:

There is no clinical test for cool, but preliminary results from a yearlong study of 375 cancer patients ages 13 to 29 (including Patino) found that those who played Re-Mission opened their pill bottles 15 percent more often and had levels of chemotherapy drugs in their blood 20 percent higher than the nonplaying group. Players also said they had a greater sense of empowerment against their cancer. HopeLab distributes Re-Mission (http://www.re-mission.net/) free and wants to develop comparable resources for sickle cell disease, depression, and autism.

In a different twist on the video craze, there is Glucoboy, a blood glucose monitor that can be attached to a Nintendo Game Boy. The more a player regularly tests his or her glucose level--and it stays within an acceptable range--the greater the rewards like access to special games. The games are seeded with information on managing diabetes, including tips on diet, exercise, and monitoring blood sugar. Now awaiting Food and Drug Administration approval, Glucoboy was invented by a man whose son routinely hid his glucose meter to avoid the finger prick. "Diabetes is 90 percent self-management," says Richard Bergenstal, an endocrinologist and executive director of the International Diabetes Center at Park Nicollett in St. Louis Park, Minn. "If video games can be crafted to reinforce or enhance self-management, that's worth exploring."

There is video games, which many kids naturally become hyper-focused into, and then there is virtual reality, which is being used for both kids & adults.

Virtual environments are so all-consuming that the deeper someone is absorbed into the game, the less they can focus on their own pain," says Hunter Hoffman, director of the Virtual Reality Analgesia Research Center at the University of Washington and the cocreator of SnowWorld, a virtual reality game for burn patients. SnowWorld takes players into an icy realm of penguins, igloos, and snowmen; users negotiate the terrain and engage in snowball fights. In a study now under review by the Clinical Journal of Pain, burn patients who played SnowWorld reported significantly lower levels of perceived pain during wound care: moderate or 5.1 on a scale of 10, compared with 7.2 or severe for those who did not play. A previous study found that the parts of the brain that register pain were less active while patients resided in the virtual world.

In my writing about this I found a website named Social Impact Games that lists "serious games," among them games designed for health and wellness, designed by others.