Video Games & Health
The health of the American people is serious business. In a relatively short time, entertainment software has become a valuable partner in that cause. Computer and video games now serve as useful tools in the fight to preserve well-being, heal the injured and train the professionals who respond to medical emergencies.
Physical Fitness
Nintendo's Wii Fit uses a sensory Balance Board to provide exercises in aerobics, balance, strength training and yoga. It measures players' Body Mass Index and creates a personally-tailored workout program of gradually more challenging exercises, dispensing health and fitness tips along the way.
Tight budgets and limited time are reducing physical-education programs in America’s school systems. To help keep children fit, many schools are discovering computer and video “exergames,” which promote increased activity and generate excitement. According to research published in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, physical-education classes in at least 35 states have embraced video game technology.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the Connellsville Area School District used a grant from the Highmark Foundation to purchase gamer bikes and a game called Dance Dance Revolution. The game, produced by Konami, requires players to vigorously dance across four arrow-shaped floor pads following a game-generated pattern set to music. In New York, the Parsippany-Troy Hills School District purchased wristband monitors and related equipment that will track students’ heart rates while playing video games. Additionally, the Idaho Digital Learning Academy incorporated Nintendo’s Wii Fit into its physical education classes. Students receive instructions online, and can do their classes from their own homes. Each Wii workout also comes with a homework assignment, such as identifying the different parts of the cardiovascular system.
Students aren’t the only ones using video games to stay fit; the concept is also being embraced by seniors and personal trainers. Retirement communities across the country, such as Grace Presbyterian Village in Dallas, are using Nintendo’s Wii at their facilities to keep seniors physically active. Brenda Terry, vice president of rehabilitative services at Grace Presbyterian Village, marvels, “When our residents hear they’re going to play Wii, they’re more willing to get up from their chairs and start their therapy.”
Personal trainers and fitness clubs, including Gold’s Gym and the YMCA, are also using interactive fitness systems that employ video game technology to make exercise more appealing. For example, seven of the Middle Tennessee YMCA facilities feature exergaming activities like Dance Dance Revolution for young clients. YMCA officials say the games have improved players’ endurance, speed, hand-eye coordination and balance. Moreover, research by the American Council on Exercise revealed that the game’s “standard” and “difficult” modes burn calories at a rate comparable to “the benefits people get with high-impact aerobics.”
Healthy Habits
The health community is also embracing the use of games in the overall promotion of healthy habits. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation established the Health Games Research Program in late 2007 to further the use of games in health. The $8.25 million program, under the direction of University of California at Santa Barbara communication researcher Debra Lieberman, has since distributed 21 grants to hospitals and universities across the country for research and development of original game designs that require physical activity or promote healthy habits. The center also launched an online health games information database in April 2010 that will enable researchers, game developers, health professionals, educators, funding agencies and policy makers to access a wide-ranging compilation of health games, research findings, publications, organizations and events in this growing field.
Similarly, Kaiser Permanente established the Healthy Eating Active Living Program. The HMO’s most notable project in this area to date is a free online game entitled The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective. The computer game teaches 9 and 10-year-olds about nutrition and exercise. In the game, children choose one of several adventures that involve solving a “mysterious outbreak of unhealthy habits,” a process which includes hands-on activities such as measuring sugar in sodas. After 20 minutes, the game shuts off, forcing players to engage in a different activity for the next hour.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched its “Apps for Healthy Kids” competition in March 2010 as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity. The competition calls on software developers, game designers and students to create innovative, engaging applications and games based on USDA’s health and wellness data sets that encourage children to eat healthier foods and be more physically active. The ESA’s president and CEO, Michael D. Gallagher, will serve on the competition’s judging panel, alongside experts from the fields of technology, nutrition, and education.
Games are also being used to address more specific health concerns. A video game called Eye Spy helps ophthalmologists screen children for visual impairments early in life. According to the National Institute of Health, one in four kids have some kind of vision problem, but most go undetected. Eye Spy uses response times and answers in a treasure hunt to pinpoint problems like lazy eye, retinal disorders or even cataracts. In addition, Bayer began selling Didget, a blood glucose meter for children with diabetes that plugs directly into Nintendo DS handheld consoles, in May 2010. Didget boots up an adventure game called Knock ‘Em Down World’s Fair that rewards players for performing a prescribed number of tests each day with points that allow them to progress through the game at a faster rate. Players can earn additional points for staying within target blood-sugar ranges, which can be preset by parents.
HopeLab, a nonprofit group that aims to improve the quality of life for kids with chronic illness, created a game called Re-Mission which it distributes, with the help of the ESA Foundation, free of charge to teens and young adults with cancer. The game features a robot that travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients to destroy cancer cells, battle infections and manage the effects of cancer treatments. In August 2008, the journal Pediatrics published research that showed Re-Mission helped young patients stick to their treatments more effective and show greater understanding of their disease.
Rehabilitation Programs
Traditionally a source for diversion, computer and video games in recent years have taken on a special meaning for individuals whose lives have been altered by injury or illness. Entertainment software has emerged as a uniquely engaging rehabilitation tool that promotes better attitudes and swifter recoveries for injuries that range from the irritating to the life-threatening.
In the past year, soldiers returning from combat in Iraq have found awaiting them Virtual Iraq, a commercial video game that University of Southern California researchers modified to help veterans cope with the debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder. The game takes exposure therapy to a new level, allowing veterans to experience the sights, sounds and smells necessary to emotionally process traumatic memories.
Duke University professor Zach Rosenthal has also applied video games to exposure therapy, creating a game in which drug addicts navigate a virtual world filled with real-life temptations under a therapist’s guidance. The effort is designed to help patients build tolerance to previously uncontrollable cravings.
Researchers at the Rutgers University Tele-Rehabilitation Institute also found that remotely monitored in-home virtual reality videogames helped improve hand function and forearm bone strength in teenagers with cerebral palsy. Participants were asked to exercise the affected hand about 30 minutes a day, five days a week using a specially fitted sensor glove linked to a videogame console installed in their home. Games were custom made by developers at Rutgers and focused on improving whole hand function. After playing these games, participants were better able to perform basic daily activities such as eating, dressing themselves, cooking, and other tasks for which two hands are needed.
Similar rehabilitation units in several other states, such as at Connecticut’s Bridgeport Hospital and Minnesota’s Northwestern Hospital, have opted for a more conventional video game console, the Nintendo Wii. Hospital officials believe that between the Wii’s wireless controller and the Wii Fit Balance Board, certain patients gradually can regain balance, grip strength, or spinal function.
Medical Training
Computer and video games are also being employed to train medical personnel for the life-or-death decisions they have to make quickly. Organizations such as the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have begun to invest in custom-made video games to prepare repeatedly for such scenarios.
BreakAway developed Pulse!!, virtual clinical training software that develops time management and quick-thinking skills for ONR. Based on a first-person shooter design, Pulse!! guides nursing and medical students through simulated patient interaction as realistic sights and sounds unfold in the background.
The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon developed Hazmat: Hotzone, a computer-based training program that serves as a “powerful instructional aid” for emergency personnel who deal with chemical spills or terrorist attacks involving biological weapons. The game allows supervisors to gauge students’ reactions in every possible scenario, without placing them in harm’s way.
Dozens of hospitals, medical schools, and health foundations have virtual clinics on Second Life where they can stage different training drills. In one drill developed by the University of California San Diego, emergency room nurses must create a triage system to handle their avatar-patients, assessing the health condition of each patient and determining how to isolate the most contagious. In other programs, such as those created by start-up firm MUVE Market LLC, Second Life tries to simulate the patients' symptoms and their response to treatment, including rashes and burns, or exhibiting odd behavior, such as dementia. Even commercial video games seem to develop effective medical personnel. The February 2007 issue of Archives of Surgery reported surgeons who played video games at least three hours a week in their past were 27 percent faster with 37 percent fewer errors in simulations of laparoscopic surgery than non-players.
Go Figure
- 37 - Percent of fewer errors that surgeons who played video games at least three hours a week in their past made in simulations of laparoscopic surgery compared to non-players according to a report published in the Archives of Surgery.
- 765 - Number of West Virginia schools installing the Dance Dance Revolution game as part of the state's physical education curriculum.
- 20 - Number of minutes after beginning that The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective, Kaiser Permanente’s online game about healthy habits, shuts down to force children to engage for an hour in another activity.
- 70 - Percent of psychologist Deborah Stokes’ patients that have reduced or eliminated their migraine medication after playing “brain” video games.
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