Robert-Wood-Johnson-Foundation

Digital Games for Physical, Cognitive and Behavioral Health

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The Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion (RWJF) just announced more than 200px-Dance_Dance_Revolution_Extreme_arcade_machine_left_side_stage$1.85 mil­lion in grants for research teams to study how dig­i­tal games can improve play­ers’ health behav­iors and out­comes (both brain-based and behavioral).

The press release: Nine Lead­ing Research Teams Select­ed to Study How Dig­i­tal Games Improve Play­ers’ Health

  • “Dig­i­tal games are inter­ac­tive and expe­ri­en­tial, and so they can engage peo­ple in pow­er­ful ways to enhance learn­ing and health behav­ior change, espe­cial­ly when they are designed on the basis of well-researched strate­gies,” said (UC San­ta Bar­bara’s Dr. Debra) Lieberman.
  • “The pace of growth and inno­va­tion in dig­i­tal games is incred­i­ble, and we see tremen­dous poten­tial to design them to help peo­ple stay healthy or man­age chron­ic con­di­tions like dia­betes or Parkin­son’s dis­ease. How­ev­er, we need to know more about what works and what does not — and why,” said Paul Tari­ni, team direc­tor for RWJF’s Pio­neer Port­fo­lio. “Health Games Research is a major invest­ment to build a research base for this dynam­ic young field. Fur­ther, the insights and ideas that flow from this work will help us con­tin­ue to expand our imag­i­na­tion of what is pos­si­ble in this arena.”

All 9 stud­ies sound inter­est­ing, 3 of them are clos­er to what we track:

  1. Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co (San Fran­cis­co, CA) A Video Game to Enhance Cog­ni­tive Health in Old­er Adults. As peo­ple age, they lose some of their abil­i­ty to sus­tain their atten­tion and to focus their atten­tion on their main task while ignor­ing dis­trac­tions. This study aims to improve these and oth­er relat­ed cog­ni­tive skills by using a dri­ving game in which [Read more…] about Dig­i­tal Games for Phys­i­cal, Cog­ni­tive and Behav­ioral Health

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Forum on the Future Impact of Neuroscience and Behavior Change

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The Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion just announced a new ini­tia­tive of their Pio­neer port­fo­lio:

“On Novem­ber 11–12, the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion (RWJF), work­ing with the Mon­i­tor Insti­tute, will wel­come a small group of researchers, aca­d­e­mics, physi­cians and indus­try lead­ers in the fields of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, neu­rode­vel­op­ment and behav­ior change for a Forum on the Future Impact of Neu­ro­science and Behav­ior Change.

The ques­tion: what could neu­ro­science inno­va­tion mean for the future of health and health care?

This blog post con­tains the list of  par­tic­i­pants (hon­ored to be one) and an excel­lent con­tex­tu­al overview.

Foun­da­tion staff will blog and tweet the event (haven’t seen the hash­tag yet); I will link to good mate­ri­als and offer my own per­spec­tive focused on that “neu­rode­vel­op­ment” aspect and, over­all, where/ how research and the real-world can “dance” with each other.

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

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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 [Read more…] about Games for Health Con­fer­ence Announces First Cog­ni­tive Health Track Pow­ered by SharpBrains

Cognitive Health Track at Games for Health Conference

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Ben Sawyer and I just agreed to cre­ate a new Cog­ni­tive Health track ‑Pow­ered by Sharp­Brains- at the 5th Annu­al Games for Health Con­fer­ence. I will host the 11-ses­sion Games for Health Conference - Cognitive Health Tracktrack, cov­er­ing a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics and an overview of Sharp­Brains’ upcom­ing report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009.

When and where: June 11–12th at the Hyatt Har­bor­side Hotel in Boston, MA.

Con­text: The Games for Health Con­fer­ence is pro­duced by The Seri­ous Games Ini­tia­tive and sup­port­ed by the Robert Wood John­son Foun­da­tion. The con­fer­ence brings togeth­er researchers, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, deci­sion-mak­ers at health­care and insur­ance providers, inno­va­tors and game devel­op­ers. I have attend­ed a few times, and have always been impressed by the cal­iber of both speak­ers and every­one in the audi­ence. Real­ly a very good crowd.

Some options to participate?

1) Attend: The cur­rent price is $379, with a 15% dis­count if you use code “sharp09” (with­out quo­ta­tion) when you reg­is­ter Here. Spe­cial price for stu­dents is $200.

Please note that the Cog­ni­tive Health track is being sched­uled now — we will announce the detailed agen­da dur­ing the month of May.

2) Speak: We are look­ing for inno­va­tors, researchers and deci­sion-mak­ers who would like to speak about their ongo­ing projects relat­ed to the use of games and oth­er com­put­er-based tech­nolo­gies for cog­ni­tive health.

If inter­est­ed, please Con­tact Us, by May 1st, a cou­ple of para­graphs sum­ma­riz­ing a) your project, bio and orga­ni­za­tion, b) what key lessons learned and impres­sions you would share if giv­en 20 minutes.

3) Advertise/ Sponsor/ Exhib­it: To inquire about options, please con­tact Beth Bryant, one of the con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers, at bbryant at dmill.com

We are proud to col­lab­o­rate with The Games for Health Con­fer­ence and expand the Cog­ni­tive Health dialogue!