By Ellen LaPointe | VP of Strategic Partnerships
Widely cited as one of the first successful health games, Re-Mission is designed to give young cancer patients a sense of power and control over their disease and help them understand why they must have certain treatments and what those treatments will do. The success of Re-Mission – to date, nearly 200,000 games have been distributed in 81 countries – has helped inspire a whole new category of games for health.
As noted in a recent Reuters article, “gamification” – turning boring, unpleasant but necessary tasks into an online game – is a new way of thinking that is gaining momentum… It's an idea that seeks to use natural human instincts – playing and learning – to help patients to get to know their illness better and adhere properly to treatment regimens or disease monitoring programs.
Re-Mission is based on the vision of HopeLab founder and board chair Pam Omidyar. Early in her career, Pam worked as a researcher in an immunology lab. As a video game enthusiast, she had the idea that a video game for teenagers with cancer might play a positive role in helping them fight their disease. HopeLab researchers worked with video game developers, cancer experts, psychologists, and young people with cancer themselves to create this groundbreaking game.
For more detailed information about Re-Mission, visit hopelab.org and re-mission.net
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