Games for Health

By  Jonah Comstock 02:02 pm June 22, 2018
Mightier, a Boston Children’s Hospital spinout that makes biofeedback video games to help children with emotional regulation, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding. Slow Ventures led the round, with additional participation from Bolt, Founder Collective, Project 11, and angel investors. The round brings the company’s total seed financing to more than $3.7 million. The Mightier system, which...
By  Jonah Comstock 04:19 pm September 15, 2017
A brain-training video game shows promising signs for the treatment of ADHD in a new randomized clinical trial. In the game, from developer NeuroPlus, children wear an EEG monitor and additional sensors that measure movement and muscle tension. The readings from those sensors actually control the game — in one game, the player rides a dragon that speeds up the more they focus and slows down when...
By  Jonah Comstock 05:03 pm June 26, 2017
RightEye, a Bethesda, Maryland-based health technology company that makes a cloud-based eye-tracking technology system and software has announced a new product, a game called Maze Master designed to improve oculomotor control in children with reading disabilities.  “After reading disorders are identified, appropriate interventions and training games are extremely important to enable users to...
By  Bill Siwicki 04:09 pm June 12, 2017
When Beaumont Health System in Dearborn, Michigan, identified the need for heightened and more effective security training in 2014, it brought on a new security executive with a bright idea. Scott Larsen, manager of cybersecurity operations and architecture, tracked down a company that delivers security training in bite-sized chunks – 10-minute interactive sessions using the gamification style. “...
By  Jonah Comstock 05:01 pm November 1, 2016
In 2013, Nature told the world that NeuroRacer, the first health game from the research lab that would spin out to become Akili Labs, was a game changer. While Akili Labs cofounder and Chief Science Advisor Adam Gazzaley might quibble with the details, he definitely thinks mental healthcare is a game in need of a change. “Every researcher wants the pun of ‘game change’ used as a headline in...
By  Jonah Comstock 12:16 pm March 8, 2016
Gamification has a perennial presence at health tech conferences, but never seems to take central stage. At a late-day session at HIMSS16, Amanda Havard, Chief Innovation Officer at Health: ELT and Charlie Schroder, a digital strategist and consultant, talked about what’s holding the space back and how health stakeholders can launch gamified apps that work. One topic that frequently comes up in...
By  Brian Dolan 04:04 am August 20, 2014
Norwalk, Connecticut-based medication adherence platform company HealthPrize has raised $3 million in a new round of funding led by Mansa Capital to help it expand globally. The investment firm has the option to invest an additional $2 million over the course of the next year, according to a report from Dow Jones. HealthPrize, founded in 2009, had previously raised about $4 million from angel...
By  Brian Dolan 01:06 pm June 20, 2014
The current state of health gaming By Jonah Comstock As Games for Health organizer and DigitalMill cofounder Ben Sawyer pointed out at the 2014 Games for Health conference, health gaming had some big milestones in the past year -- events that may not represent a breakthrough for the category but show it steadily building in importance. Health games made the cover of Nature when a study showed...
By  Brian Dolan 06:38 am March 31, 2014
Berlin-based Caterna Vision Therapy will soon become the developer of the first mobile medical app in Germany to be prescribed to patients by physicians and that has reimbursement in place from a health plan, Caterna's founder Dr. Markus Müschenich told MobiHealthNews. Beginning tomorrow -- April 1st -- Caterna's online program for children with amblyopia, a visual impairment condition, will be...
By  Brian Dolan 08:11 am March 26, 2014
The multibillion dollar tech news this week is that Facebook is set to acquire virtual reality gaming company Oculus for more than $2 billion. During a call with reporters and analysts following the announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that while Oculus will continue to focus on gaming in the short term, the deal was more about placing a bet on the next big computing platform...