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Medicine Games

The Video Game Prescribed By Doctors To Treat ADHD 29

Posted by BeauHD from the digital-therapeutics dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: In 2020 [EndeavorRx] became the first such game to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the treatment of ADHD in children. Currently only available on prescription from doctors in the US, EndeavorRx at first glance looks very similar to countless other games. You control a little alien that races on a spaceship through different worlds having to collect things. But the app-based game was developed in conjunction with neuroscientists, and is designed to stimulate and improve areas of the brain that play a key role in attention function. The idea is that it trains a child with ADHD to both better multitask and ignore distractions, with a computer algorithm measuring his or her performance and customizing the difficulty of the game in real time. When doctors prescribe it, the child's parents get sent an activation link that is needed before the game will play.

Eddie Martucci, chief executive of Akili, the Boston-based tech firm behind EndeavorRx, says the game has been designed to boost cognitive progressing. "It is something that's very difficult to get through molecular means, like taking a pill. But it turns out that sensory stimuli can actually directly stimulate parts of the brain controlling cognitive function." His company now plans to launch the game in Europe in the next few years. Akili is one of only a handful of companies with clearance to offer a digital therapeutic as a prescription for medical conditions. Late last year, the FDA approved a virtual reality-based treatment for children with the visual disorder amblyopia, or lazy eye.
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The Video Game Prescribed By Doctors To Treat ADHD More

The Video Game Prescribed By Doctors To Treat ADHD

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  • Are they worried people might self-medicate? Overdose?

    • If I had to guess, I'd say it is probably a matter of profit: selling to a smaller population, but at a much higher price.

      • I bet the microtransactions are killer.

      • Spot on. This is a blatant cash grab. Take a look at their pricing.

        • I don't think big pharma has anything on mobile game developers. Probably still cheaper than most "free to play" games.

        • If it actually works, and assuming they did a lot of research and testing to develop it, then it's not a cash grab. Creating an effective therapy is a lot harder than writing a simple web game. They need to recover that investment.

          If it doesn't work, then it's a scam. I have no information about whether it does or not.

      • If I had to guess, I'd say it is probably a matter of profit: selling to a smaller population, but at a much higher price.

        I think it's more marketing.

        If you sell it without prescription then it gets lumped in with a thousand other games that claim to improve your cognition or reduce your brain age with without much evidence (though I should throw some props to the researcher behind the Brain Age ones [wikipedia.org]).

        But there's a much higher level of medical evidence needed to justify a prescription, so a parent could fairly rationally go with one of these games as opposed to something else.

        There's also the fact that prescriptions can get co

      • The other factor is that it's treated as a medication. To make it "over the counter" requires a significant amount of expensive testing and safety data.

        The system wasn't designed to handle video games as medicine, and it's not well suited to it.

    • $33/mo min sub 3month + hardware? and network? costs

      • > $33/mo min sub 3month + hardware? and network? costs

        And for that you get:

        3 out of 4 children said they felt some improvement. The study was sponsored by the game maker with one of the study's authors on staff. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

        and

        3 out of 5 parents said they saw some improvement in their child. The study included medication and was sponsored by the game maker. https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by piojo ( 995934 )

        If there are persistent benefits, that's a bargain. They could charge ten times as much and it would still be worth it. But we don't know if it has persistent benefits. I assume not since the brain is always changing, but I haven't read anything other than the summary.

  • I'm sure I would have been diagnosed ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Good thing I've been self-medicating video games for decades.
  • You know, SimCity, Warcraft, Starcraft. I guess any RTS.
  • I'm surprised nobody's noticed the similarity to the Mind Game in the novel Ender's Game. It also used and AI to guide the child through the game.

    • That may be because most people only watched the film which leaves the viewer oblivious to many facts about the story.

  • First, although the summary says it's for kids, I'd love to try it out. I can't take my ADD meds now, and even when I can I build up a tolerance quickly and I need a break before they work again. It would be good to have an alternative.

    Second, I'm wondering if something like this might help slow the progression of dementia. I know they're entirely different conditions, but if the process engages neuro-plasticity maybe it would help, and it probably couldn't hurt.

  • I was excited for this despite the comments here of it being a cash grab because if it works, it works. However, I visited the Google Play Store listing and it has more than 50% one-star reviews mostly because the app just doesn't work. There is no judgment on whether it helps with ADHD as promised. The comments on Google just complain of crashes and textures not loading and the ilk. Very disappointing for something that could have been great even if it did half of what it promised.

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