Games for Health Conference Announces First Cognitive Health Track Powered by SharpBrains

This is a press release that went through the wire ear­li­er today. If you are inter­est­ed, in attend­ing the con­fer­ence, you can learn more and reg­is­ter Here

Note that below you can find 5 out of the 12 ses­sions — we will announce the full track tomor­row. To get a 15% off reg­is­tra­tion fees, you can use dis­count code: sharp09, when you register.

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The Games for Health Project, orga­niz­ers of the 5th Annu­al Games for Health Con­fer­ence, today announced its first Cog­ni­tive Health Track pow­ered by Sharp­Brains, a lead­ing mar­ket research com­pa­ny focused on the brain fit­ness and the cog­ni­tive health market.

The Cog­ni­tive Health track builds upon pre­vi­ous year’s sam­pling of ses­sions look­ing at cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness, expand­ing to a full two-day track at The Games for Health Con­fer­ence, June 11–12, Boston, MA. The Con­fer­ence fea­tures the largest gath­er­ing of orga­ni­za­tions inter­est­ed in the inter­sec­tion between videogames, health and healthcare.

“There is already a very active cog­ni­tive health videogames indus­try and field of research,” said Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Games for Health Con­fer­ence. “We part­nered with Sharp­Brains to bring their exper­tise in this field our con­fer­ence plan­ning. Togeth­er we have for the first time cre­at­ed a pow­er­ful set of ses­sions and a much need­ed con­ver­sa­tion with researchers, thought-lead­ers and indus­try pio­neers who will attend the event in June.”

The track fea­tures a dozen ses­sions cov­er­ing research find­ings and part­ner­ships, imple­men­ta­tion in insur­ance, con­sumer and clin­i­cal set­tings, and spe­cial ses­sions look­ing at inno­v­a­tive areas such as dri­ver safe­ty, healthy aging, atten­tion deficits, stroke/traumatic brain injury, schiz­o­phre­nia and mul­ti­ple sclerosis.

“The con­ver­gence of inter­ac­tive media such as videogames with cog­ni­tive sci­ence opens the door to inno­v­a­tive and scal­able approach­es to cog­ni­tive health that may com­ple­ment tra­di­tion­al inter­ven­tions. We see much oppor­tu­ni­ty — and much con­fu­sion. Our part­ner­ship with Games for Health enables a much need­ed con­ver­sa­tion to look far and wide and to ensure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of using “seri­ous games” to mea­sure and improve cog­ni­tive health,” said Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, CEO & co-founder of Sharp­Brains, who will host the track.

Ses­sion and key speak­ers for the cog­ni­tive health track include:

• - Bird’s Eye View of Cog­ni­tive Health Inno­va­tion, includ­ing pub­lic release of the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, with Alvaro Fernandez
• - The All­state-Posit Sci­ence Part­ner­ship: Cog­ni­tive Train­ing for Safer Dri­ving, Tom War­den, Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent and Leader of All­state Insur­ance’s Research and Plan­ning Cen­ter, and Hen­ry Mah­ncke, Vice Pres­i­dent, Research & Out­comes at Posit Science
• - The Road Ahead: 5 Bot­tle­necks And Poten­tial Solu­tions, with above speak­ers and Evian Gor­don, CEO of Brain Resource, and Peter Chris­tian­son, Pres­i­dent of Young Dri­vers of Canada
• - Fron­tiers in Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Research, with Dr. Daphne Bave­li­er, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester’s Depart­ment of Brain and Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence, and Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­o­gy at New York’s Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine
• - A Ven­ture Cap­i­tal­ist’s View of the Oppor­tu­ni­ty and Chal­lenges Ahead, with Tim Chang, Prin­ci­pal at Nor­west Ven­ture Part­ners, investor in Lumos Labs

Com­plete details for Games for Health 2009 can be found online at http://www.gamesforhealth.org. Reg­is­tra­tion is open through June 11, 2009.

About Games For Health 

Games for Health, the lead­ing pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the field of health games, unites the best minds in health care and game devel­op­ment to advance game tech­nolo­gies that improve peo­ple’s health and the deliv­ery of health care. Through their nation­al and region­al events, as well as exten­sive online resources, Games for Health brings togeth­er researchers, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and game devel­op­ers to share best prac­tices and forge new, game-based solu­tions to press­ing health and health care chal­lenges. Games for Health is fund­ed pri­mar­i­ly by the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion’s Pio­neer Port­fo­lio, which sup­ports inno­v­a­tive ideas that may lead to sig­nif­i­cant break­throughs in the future of health and health care. It was found­ed in 2004 by the Seri­ous Games Ini­tia­tive, a project of the Woodrow Wil­son Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Schol­ars ded­i­cat­ed to apply­ing inno­v­a­tive games and game tech­nolo­gies to a range of pub­lic and pri­vate pol­i­cy, lead­er­ship and man­age­ment issues. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.gamesforhealth.org.

About Sharp­Brains

Sharp­Brains is a mar­ket research & advi­so­ry firm devot­ed to help­ing com­pa­nies, health providers, investors, pol­i­cy mak­ers and indi­vid­u­als nav­i­gate the brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health field. The com­pa­ny was co-found­ed by exec­u­tive Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, mem­ber of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, and neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned for his clin­i­cal work, research, and writ­ing. Sharp­Brains recent­ly released the report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009, and will pub­licly unveil the con­sumer guide The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness dur­ing the con­fer­ence. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.sharpbrains.com.

About Games for Health Con­fer­ence Sponsors

The Games for Health Con­fer­ence is held in part­ner­ship with the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion’s Pio­neer Port­fo­lio, which has served as the lead­ing spon­sor of the Games for Health Project since 2004. The Pio­neer Port­fo­lio sup­ports inno­v­a­tive ideas that may lead to sig­nif­i­cant break­throughs in the future of health and health care; hav­ing rec­og­nized the trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial of games, its sup­port has helped Games for Health to become the lead­ing pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the grow­ing health games arena.

Humana Inc., one of the nation’s largest health ben­e­fits com­pa­nies, will also return as a pre­miere health care spon­sor this year, pro­vid­ing sup­port for sev­er­al con­fer­ence activ­i­ties. Humana will present new ini­tia­tives from the Humana Games for Health (HG4H) pro­gram, which offi­cial­ly launched at the Games for Health con­fer­ence in 2008.

Addi­tion­al Spon­sors include: Inter­na­tion­al Game Devel­op­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, Vir­tu­al Heroes, Mass Tech­nol­o­gy Lead­er­ship Coun­cil, Muzzy Lane, H.I.L. Forum, Busi­ness Resource Team, Enter­tain­ment Con­sumers Asso­ci­a­tion, Mass­a­chu­setts Office of Trav­el & Tourism, Mary-Mar­garet Net­work, Break­away Ltd and MODSIM World Con­fer­ence & Expo.

Web­site: http://www.gamesforhealth.org
Web­site: https://sharpbrains.com