Videogame for visualizing healing

A just-published study in the journal Pediatrics involving 375 cancer patients aged 13-29 in the US, Canada, and Australia found that their playing a game called Re-Mission "led to better compliance with their medications and more confidence in fighting the disease," redOrbit.com reports. The study's lead author in the Netherlands, Dr. Pamela Kato, told Reuters that the results are important because adherence to treatment is a major problem in that age group. According to redOrbit, Re-Mission, developed by the nonprofit HopeLab in Redwood City, Calif., is about "a microscopic 'nanobot' named Roxxi [who] travels through the bodies of characters with cancer, blasting away cancer cells and bacteria with a firearm of chemotherapy and antibiotics."

Mental health care in virtual worlds

An academic paper out of Italy and the Netherlands describes "immersive e-therapy," a hybrid therapy in clinical psychology that occurs in both virtual-world and physical-world settings. Authors Alessandra Gorini, Andrea Gaggioli, and Cinzia Vigna "suggest that, compared with conventional telehealth applications such as emails, chat, and videoconferences, the interaction between real and 3-D virtual worlds may convey greater feelings of presence, facilitate the clinical communication process, positively influence group processes and cohesiveness in group-based therapies, and foster higher levels of interpersonal trust between therapists and patients." They also look at "challenges related to the potentially addictive nature of such virtual worlds" and "questions related to privacy and personal safety."