Not Just Child's Play
With their unique ability to distract, educate, and entertain, video games are increasingly being used to help heal and soothe the sick
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 (www.re-mission.net) free and wants to develop comparable resources for sickle cell disease, depression, and autism. Similar games are under development by others. The National Institutes of Health, for instance, has funded creation of games including Hungry Red Planet ($11.95; www.hungryredplanet.com) and the forthcoming Escape From Diab, both aimed at preventing childhood obesity.
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."
Ironically, one of the most promising uses for computer games, long demonized for fueling couch potatoism and childhood obesity, is fitness. Health messages are easy to embed in games, and the new generation of computer cameras such as Sony's EyeToy, which projects the user's image on the screen, prompts youngsters to work up a sweat. The fitness benefits of playing Dance Dance Revolution, the hugely popular interactive video game in which players repeat a dance sequence and compete against each other online, have been well documented. Now that concept is being taken further at places like XRtainment Zone, a budding chain of video-fitness centers where the games are simulated but the workouts, from throwing a baseball to running in place to riding a bike, are real. The same concept is being used in rehabilitation, particularly for stroke victims, where the tedium of repeated motion exercises like reaching and bending often impedes progress.
Going the standard video game one step further is virtual reality, where users wear goggles and enter a computer-generated universe that is so distracting it can actually ease pain and anxiety. "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.
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