New Evidence Supports Re-Mission and Advances Games for Health

We have talked quite a bit about games for health and building the evidence to understand the health impact of video and computer games here on Pioneering Ideas. Given that, I wanted to share with you a new study published this week in the journal Pediatrics.

The study evaluated the impact of playing Re-Mission, a video game developed by HopeLab specifically for teens and young adults with cancer, on key behavioral and psychological factors associated with successful cancer treatment. For those of your not familiar with Re-Mission, the game allows players, primarily young cancer patients, to pilot a microscopic robot named Roxxi through the bodies of fictional cancer patients, blasting away cancer cells and battling the side-effects of cancer and cancer treatments.

The study, the largest health game study to date, found that participants who played Re-Mission maintained higher levels of chemotherapy in their blood and took their antibiotics more consistently than those in the control group. Re-Mission players also showed faster acquisition of cancer-related knowledge and an increased sense of control over cancer.

In a press release issued by HopeLab, Steve Cole, Ph.D., vice president of research and co-author of the article, said, “This study shows that a strategically designed video game can be a powerful new tool to enhance the impact of medical treatment by motivating healthy behavior in the patient.”

We couldn’t agree more and expect that the work of Pioneer’s national program, Health Games Research will help continue to build this body of research and inform and advance game development to improve health outcomes.