It helps teens and young adults who are afflicted with cancer.

It has been shown to improve the quality of life for young cancer patients and to increase their understanding of the disease.

It also enhances their ability to talk about their cancer, manage its side effects, and stick with therapy regimens.

Could "it" be a miracle drug? Some revolutionary new medical procedure? White magic?

Nah. It's a video game. (Hey, this is GamePolitics after all!)

Created by Hope Lab in collaboration with several game developers, biologists, and young cancer patients, the somewhat whimsically titled Re-Mission is one of those serious games we love to write about because they show the positive potential of video game tech. Re-Mission is a third-person shooter starring a microscopic nanobot named Roxxi whose mission is to enter the bodies of patients and fight cancer and bacteria on the cellular level.
( Read more... )

During last month's Games for Health Conference, Skip Rizzo, research scientist and professor for the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), delivered a fascinating presentation on how game technology is being used to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and supplement patients' physical therapy regimens.

The medical world defines PTSD as a psychological reaction caused by "traumatic events outside the range of usual human experiences" such as military combat, being kidnapped or taken hostage, terrorist attack, torture, incarceration as a prisoner of war, automobile accidents, etc. Symptoms can include depression, anxiety, isolation, intrusive thoughts and flashbacks, and avoidance of reminders of the event.

Therapy usually entails asking patients to imagine particular events that resemble or symbolize the original trauma. Unfortunately, because avoidance is one of the symptoms of PTSD, many are unable or unwilling to do so. This is where video game technology can play a role.
( Read more... )

The next time your mom tells you that you'll never get into medical school if you don't stop playing video games, tell her about research data that says surgeons who play games perform faster and with fewer mistakes than their colleagues who shun games.

A Reuters article recently brought our attention to a new study that supports those findings.

Conducted by Beth Israel Medical Center in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family, this study used a respectable sampling of 303 surgeons who were observed performing a standard laparoscopic training exercise. Laparoscopic surgery involves a fiberoptic instrument inserted through a small incision and then used to observe and manipulate the body's interior. Laparoscopic procedures take a deft touch and are described by Dr. James Rosser as "trying to tie your shoe laces with three-foot-long chopsticks while watching on a TV screen."

Hmmm... That does sound like it would make for a rather fun game.

Researchers found that surgeons who played video games for at least 20 minutes before surgery completed the exercise 11 seconds faster than those who didn't play.

Rosser, the study's lead investigator and the director of the Advanced Medical Technology Institute at Beth Israel, understands that patients are not appropriate guinea pigs and has worked for well over a decade to provide surgeons with the tools they need to practice, loosen up their fingers, and get into the right mindset.

After all, opera singers warm up their voices before a performance and big league hitters take practice swings before stepping to the plate. Wouldn't it be nice if the guy removing your spleen could do the same thing?

-Reporting from San Diego, GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen

Want to talk about it? You can discuss this story via the "comments" feature (click below), or in the new GamePolitics Forums...

Video game technology is like duct tape. The ways in which it can be used are limitless.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the recent Games for Health Conference at the University of Southern California (USC). Held in Los Angeles on the day before the opening of the E3, the event attracted more than a dozen speakers from the video game and healthcare industries to talk about how game tech is being used to enhance mental and physical health. You can view a trailer for the GFH Conference here.

Readers of GamePolitics are no doubt familiar with some of the alternative uses for games such as the Dance Dance Revolution program in West Virginia schools which is aimed at combating childhood obesity. Or perhaps you've heard of Ben's Game and others like it which help kids deal with painful treatments.

But games can improve lives in a number of other ways. Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus, an SNES game released in 1994, starred an asthmatic dinosaur who progressed by avoiding hazards like dust clouds and cigarette smoke. The game was designed as an alternative way to teach children important asthma management skills. Studies showed that Bronkie was more successful in teaching kids about their condition than watching a 30-minute video on the same topic. Focus groups also demonstrated that children with asthma were drawn to and identified with a game protagonist who proudly held his inhaler on the game cover - an image the developers had to fight for, by the way.
( Read more... )

What's this? Video games shown on Capitol Hill and it wasn't a congressional game-bash?

It's true... Our friend Ben Sawyer at Games For Health clued GamePolitics into his organization's event last week in Washington, D.C..

More than 350 congressional staffers and other guests feasted on the likes of Nintendo's Brain Age, Sony's Eye Toy Play, Konami's DDR Mario Mix and several less commercial titles (full list after the jump). Games for Health project team members also held more than a dozen briefings with the staffs of congressional committees or individual members of Congress, including leaders of both the majority and minority side of the house Medical Technology Caucas, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN). Also publicly supporting the event were Senators Michael Enzi (R-WY) and Tom Harkin (D-IA)

In categorizing the congressional response, Sawyer said, "In general we found staff very receptive to our work although many hadn't played many games and so when we'd show screenshots to things one of the first impacts was that things looked so interesting and advanced. Some had heard about DDR. We had to keep reminding ourselves not to use acronyms like that! ...but certainly... games were still something foreign. Despite all that we got some great questions. It's amazing how fast some staff get up to speed as you start talking with them. One staffer was immediately drawn to the idea of how games could help redefine interfaces to health IT systems - that's pretty advanced thinking."

Obesity and disease management were major concerns for congressional attendees, Sawyer told GP. Staffers were intrigued by the idea of creating systems that help or teach people to avoid or manage chronic conditions and injuries.

"This of course," Sawyer said, "is tied directly to lowering costs and adding personal responsibility to some extent and given the political spectrum on the Hill it seems like a consensus point to explore. Use games to educate cheaply, reach populations that are hard to reach, induce more personal responsibility, focus on management of health issues that tax the personnel and resources of the healthcare system."

More photos from the event can be seen here. A trailer video is available on YouTube.
( Read more... )

Tongue depressor? Check... Blood pressure cuff? Check... PS2? Whaaaa?

Will game consoles be standard equipment in medical offices in the near future? Bryan Raudenbush, associate professor of psychology at Wheeling Jesuit University, thinks so.

"They could even be used in waiting rooms to distract patients from upcoming surgical procedures," he says in a recent Georgia Strait article.

At the Society for Psychophysiological Research conference in Portugal last September, Raudenbush presented a study that assessed the feasibility of using video games to distract patients from painful ailments, treatments, and procedures. Participants in the study played a game from one of six genres (action, fighting, mental/puzzle, sports, arcade, and boxing) for ten minutes and then took a cold-pressor test for pain. This involves submerging the subject's hand in a bucket of ice-cold water for five minutes or until he or she can no longer tolerate it. Checking oxygen saturation, pulse, and blood pressure in his subjects both before they started playing and after the pain tests, Raudenbush concluded that pain tolerance was greatest among those that were distracted by games; players of sports and fighting games showed the most tolerance.

"Most of the studies you see in the media report the detrimental effects of video games, perhaps because that is tied to a specific agenda; I'm not sure," Raudenbush says. "But video games have been found to increase hand-eye coordination, promote healthy competition, aid in some aspects of therapy, and now...decrease pain responses."
( Read more... )