Serious Games bringing the Kinect technology into the operating room Da Vinci Surgical Robot--Soon to Be Kinectified January 18, 2011 A group of graduate engineering students have adapted Microsoft’s new Kinect technology for surgical robotics. The method involves using the Kinect — an array of cameras and sensors that allow videogame users to control their Xbox 360s with their bodies — to give surgeons force feedback when using tools to perform robotic surgery. “For robotics-assisted surgeries, the surgeon has no sense of touch right now,” said Howard Chizeck, UW professor of electrical engineering. “What we’re doing is using that sense of touch to give information to the surgeon, like ‘You don’t want to go here." Currently, surgeons commonly use robotic tools for minimally invasive surgeries. Tubes with remotely controlled surgical instruments on the ends are inserted into the patient in order to minimize scarring. Surgeons control the instruments with input devices that resemble complex joysticks, and use tiny cameras in the tubes to see inside the patient. The problem is, however, that surgeons have no realistic way to feel what they are doing. If they move a surgical instrument into something solid, the instrument will stop but the joystick will keep moving. Electrical engineering graduate student Fredrik Ryden solved this problem by writing code that allowed the Kinect to map and react to environments in three dimensions, and send spatial information about that environment back to the user. This places electronic restrictions on where the tool can be moved; if the actual instrument hits a bone, the joystick that controls it stops moving. If the instrument moves along a bone, the joystick follows the same path. It is even possible to define off-limits areas to protect vital organs. Howard’s group came up with the idea of using a “depth camera,” a sensor that detects movement in three dimensions by measuring reflecting infrared radiation to automatically define those regions. At a meeting on a Friday afternoon in December, a team member suggested using the newly released Kinect. Before the idea to use a Kinect, a similar system would have cost around $50,000, Chizeck said. The project is part of a larger research effort at the electrical engineering department’s BioRobotics Lab to improve surgical robotic methods. The team hopes to integrate its feedback system into a collaboration of different systems. The team hopes to make surgical robotics reliable and practical enough for long-distance use, allowing doctors in major cities to easily perform surgeries on patients in small, isolated towns. Ryden said that a paper will soon be published about the research. In the meantime, the sensors will need to be scaled down to a size deemed appropriate for surgical use, and the resolution of the video will need to be increased before it is usable. Reach reporter Ryan Dunn at news at dailyuw.com. ## Serious Games Bringing The Kinect Technology Into The Operating Room Via: Winnipeg Free Press - Video Games in the OR? Doctors Say New Technology Makes Surgery More Efficient At the same time, doctors at a Toronto hospital are banking on video game technology to save time and prevent contamination in the operating room. A team at Sunnybrook Hospital has started using the Xbox Kinect to virtually manipulate key medical images during surgery. The doctors use hand gestures to zoom in and out of the images or freeze a particular shot without leaving the operating table. Surgeons typically have to leave the sterile field around the patient to pull up images such as MRI or CT scans on a nearby computer. They then have to go through a meticulous cleanup before returning to the area to make sure they don't bring in any bacteria that could harm the patient. It can take up to 20 minutes to clean up each time a doctor consults an image, said Dr. Calvin Law, who helped integrate the technology into the operating room. Those interruptions sometimes cause more than an hour's delay over the course of a surgery, said Law, a surgical oncologist with the hospital's gastrointestinal cancer team. By eliminating those delays, the hospital could save enough time to operate on more patients. What's more, it would help surgeons stay focused and decrease the risk of contamination by keeping everyone within the sterile field, he said. With better control over the images, surgeons can be more precise, Law said. For a cancer surgeon, that could mean saving more healthy tissue when removing a tumor, he said. The idea to bring the Kinect into the operating room came from three engineers — Jamie Tremaine, Greg Brigley and Matt Strickland. The console is a depth camera, meaning it sees in 3-D. It then creates a digital skeleton of the person captured on camera and tracks how the skeleton moves. Those motions are translated into commands. The engineers worked closely with surgeons at Sunnybrook to find command gestures that could be used in the operating room without compromising surgery procedures, Law said. The system underwent extensive testing and has been used in surgery six times, Law said. There are plans to roll it out in other parts of the hospital. They're also looking into ways to use the technology for physiotherapy.
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 Enlarge Image MICROSOFT You can go to Disneyland... sort of, with Xbox 360's Kinnect. LOS ANGELES -- Gamers, start saving your shekels. If this week's preview of upcoming video games is any indication, there's plenty to get excited about in the months and years to come. Roughly 45,000 members of the interactive entertainment industry made the annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles this week to attend E3 -- a.k.a. the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- to catch a glimpse at tomorrow's titles today. And so, after three exhausting days of traipsing through the world's biggest video game trade show, the following are some of the key highlights: Hot hardware Nintendo unveiled its next-generation video game console, Wii U, slated for a late 2012 launch. Gamers will use a 6.2-inch wireless touch screen to control the action -- be it swiping or tapping fingers, using the buttons and analog sticks or taking advantage of the built-in gyroscope to tilt the controller around. Think of it as an iPad meets a Nintendo Wii (but with high-definition graphics, too). For example, in a football game you can draw a play on the tablet, so that your opponent beside you doesn't see what you're planning. Or in an adventure game, you'll move your character around the virtual world on the television screen but have important info displayed on the Wii U screen, such as character stats, a mini-map, mission objectives, and so on. Or the tablet can show a different perspective of the same game. If someone in the family wants to watch TV, you can keep playing your Wii U game on the tablet. The console will also play older Nintendo Wii games. The tablet -- which also includes a camera, microphone and speaker -- is lightweight and comfortable, and the half-dozen games and other demos were a blast. No price or launch date has been announced yet. -- -- -- Sony also unveiled new hardware at the show. The PlayStation Vita will soon replace the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), bringing console-like graphics to a hand-held system for the first time. Be sure to check out Uncharted: Golden Abyss on YouTube. You can play games in one of four ways: via the 5-inch OLED touch screen, the back touch panel, various buttons and dual analog sticks, and a built-in gyroscope. The PSVita also boasts dual cameras, Internet connectivity, customizable apps, and the ability to chat with friends while playing online. The impressive new hand-held will go on sale in time for Christmas for $249.99 for the Wi-Fi version and $299.99 for the Wi-Fi + 3G version. Shoot now, ask questions later Action games were all the rage at this year's E3, including a number of first- and third-person shooters. Amassing much of the buzz at the show were sequels with a "3" in their name: Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Electronic Arts' Battlefield 3, Ubisoft's Far Cry 3, EA/BioWare's Mass Effect 3, Sony's Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and Microsoft Game Studios' Gears of War 3. One of the most impressive shooters was 2K Games' BioShock Infinite, which is also the third game in the popular franchise. The wildly strange and imaginative action sequel takes place on a floating air city in an alternate 1912, as you attempt to rescue a mysterious young woman with uncontrollable powers. The stunningly detailed world, memorable characters and intense action sequences all adds to the immersive experience. The single-player adventure is slated for a 2012 launch on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. While not shooters, per se, other impressive action games at E3 include Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Crystal Dynamics' reinvented Tomb Raider, Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Warner Bros.' Batman: Arkham City and EA/BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. For the kiddies Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 might get all the press, but the California-based publisher likely has another monster hit on their hands -- for younger gamers. Out this holiday season for all major consoles and the PC, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is part toy, part video game. Players get three small action figures that, when placed on the "Portal of Power" -- a small disc that plugs into the video game machine's USB port -- unlocks that character inside the action role-playing game. There are roughly 30 action figures to collect in total, each with their own unique skills and abilities, and you can "level up" the in-game character over time. When you take your Skylanders figurine to someone else's Portal of Power -- even if it's on another console -- your character and all of its powers are teleported into the game. Microsoft also wowed attendees with the next batch of games that utilize the popular Kinect for Xbox 360 peripheral. Young kids will no doubt fall for the charm of Kinect Disneyland Adventures, where you can walk around the amusement park, take virtual photos with the Disney characters and engage in more than a dozen motion-sensing games (with a friend beside you, if you like). Also coming this fall for Kinect is Warner Bros.' Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster, that uses the Kinect camera to allow kids to play around with Sesame Street characters. Winnipeg Free Press By: Marc Saltzman
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By: Derrik J. Lang, The Associated Press 
The new Nintendo Wii U gaming console is displayed on a video screen during a news conference at the E3 Gaming Convention in Los Angeles, Tuesday, June 7, 2011. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Nintendo has introduced the world to the Wii's touchy new big brother: the Wii U. The Japanese gaming giant on Tuesday unveiled the Wii video game console's successor, which will broadcast high-definition video and feature a touchscreen controller that can detect motion and interact with what appears on a television display. "Up until now, home console games had to occupy the TV screen in order to be played," said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. "The new controller for Wii U, with its 6.2-inch screen built in, means you won't need to give up your gameplay when someone else comes in the room and wants to watch a TV program." The white touchscreen controller, reminiscent of Apple Inc.'s iPad and other tablet computers, can broadcast standard-definition video but also features a directional pad, microphone, dual analog sticks, speakers, two pairs of shoulder buttons and a front-facing camera, which can be used to make video calls. The console itself will use proprietary high-definition optical discs, 1080p HDMI output and internal memory that can be upgraded with USB and SD technology. No other technical specifications were provided. The prototype controller was demonstrated during the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming industry's annual convention, in several ways: displaying a player's inventory in a "Legend of Zelda" game, offering an alternative way to play a chasing game, being used as a shield from incoming attacks in a first-person shooter game and showing the image of a teed-up golf ball on the ground before it was struck to a putting green depicted on a TV. The controller was also shown being used to browse the Internet both on a TV and the controller. Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president, noted that the touchscreen controller is not meant to be a portable gaming device and that the system is dubbed the Wii U because its "unique, unifying and maybe even utopian." Nintendo said the Wii U will be released between April and December next year and will be backward-compatible with Wii games and controllers. "Smash Brothers," ''Darksiders II," ''Batman: Arkham City," ''Tekken," ''Assassin's Creed" and "Metro: Last Light" were among the titles announced that would be released for the system. The price for Wii U was not revealed. The unveiling of the Wii U comes after two years of slumping sales for Nintendo's Wii, which remains the overall top-selling home video game console against Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3. Those consoles already feature high-definition graphics and added motion-sensing capabilities similar to the Wii last year with their respective Kinect and Move camera systems.
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A bipartisan group of 74 lawmakers issued a letter Friday demanding that the Pentagon's health plan cover a treatment for brain injured soldiers known as cognitive rehabilitation therapy. Rep. Bill Pascrell, (D-NJ), and Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA), the leaders of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force, cited an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, which found that Tricare, an insurance-style plan covering soldiers and many veterans, had relied on a controversial study to avoid paying for the intensive and often expensive treatment. "We hope that you share our concern that service members returning from the battlefield cannot wait to receive treatment for their injuries," the letter said. "It is our hope that there exists some contingency plan to provide cognitive rehabilitation for service members who are returning home today." Official Pentagon figures show that nearly 200,000 troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries since 2001, though our investigation found evidence suggesting the true toll is far higher. Although the majority of soldiers recover from the most common form of head trauma, known as mild traumatic brain injury or concussion, some suffer lifelong mental difficulties, with trouble remembering words or following directions. Pascrell and Platts first wrote a letter demanding that Tricare provide cognitive rehabilitation more than two years ago. In response, Tricare contracted a study which found insufficient evidence to justify providing the treatment. In confidential reviews obtained by ProPublica and NPR, however, leading brain specialists blasted the study for ignoring evidence that the therapy helped, calling it "deeply flawed." Top Pentagon health officials have also expressed concern about the high cost of the treatment, our reporting found. Tricare has said that it will cover many aspects of cognitive rehabilitation, which typically includes physical and speech therapy. But soldiers, families and civilian clinics told us they have had trouble convincing Tricare to pick up the tab. Tricare's stance stands in contrast to some major private insurance companies and some state Medicaid programs, which cover the treatment. Expert panels convened by the Pentagon and the Institutes of Medicine have also endorsed the therapy, which can cost more than $50,000 per soldier. Tricare has since commissioned the Institutes of Medicine to carry out yet another review of cognitive rehabilitation. The review kicks off on Monday, but is not expected to be complete until the end of this year. Pascrell urged the Pentagon to react more quickly to Congressional concerns. "Clearly, the Pentagon is overdue in responding to our nation's wounded warriors," Pascrell said in a statement. "It's time to act." Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who signed Friday's letter, also has begun an investigation into the contract between Tricare and ECRI, a nonprofit firm that reviews medical treatments. ECRI has defended its study as scientifically sound and pledged to cooperate with the inquiry. McCaskill chairs a Senate subcommittee on contracting oversight. (T. Christian Miller, of ProPublica, and NPR's Daniel Zwerdling have been reporting this year on troops returning home with traumatic brain injuries. Click here for the NPR News investigation Brain Wars: How The Military Is Failing Its Wounded.)
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January 1, 2011 article found here by Andrew Dyce A team of programmers at USC have been busy with Microsoft’s device. Not trying to beat high scores, but playing PC games without a keyboard, and designing applications for physical rehabilitation. 
While many of us have been using our Microsoft Kinects for nothing more than some sport simulations and dance titles, it seems that there are some people who are actually trying to push the device’s boundaries. One such group is a team of programmers at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Many gamers may be making their New Year’s Resolution to leave time-consuming MMOs behind in favor of exercise, but these programmers are shown that you can do both, using the Kinect as an input device for World of Warcraft. According to videos posted by the team, that’s just the beginning. The technology being used to turn the Kinect into a means of capturing 3D images may be a bit over the head of the average gamer, but the concepts at work for ICT’s interface is actually quite simple. They’ve designed a system that will allow the Kinect’s motion and depth sensors to transfer body movements into computer commands, called the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST). While previous Kinect videos have shown that hand movements can interact with a Windows operating system, FAAST takes movements made by the entire body and converts them into keyboard inputs, meaning that nearly any program could be operated with motion controls. If the Kinect has any chance of being taken seriously by the hardcore community, then high-profile games will have to back the tech up. What game is more high-profile among the hardcore than World of Warcraft? These programmers have shown no fear, creating an input system based on the Kinect that will allow users to interact in a firsthand way with the world of Azeroth: The Kinect is clearly not going away anytime soon, even if the initial reaction by the fan community is to dismiss this idea. The Kinect’s sales have taken off since launch, and since the developing company also happens to make an OS, it’s not crazy to think that they have big plans for expanding the Kinect’s use. World of Warcraft may be a game for the hardcore, but the influx of players that have embraced Cataclysm in record numbers show that the community isn’t afraid of change if the end result offers something new. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick may have problems with the Kinect, but perhaps his opinions might change if he saw the device being used to offer WoW to a new audience. Sure, the community of WoW fans will almost certainly never make the shift away from mouse and keyboard, but anyone knows that playing Kinect for a few minutes is sure to get your heart rate up. Exercise is exercise, so is it a stupid idea to offer players a chance to get a bit of a workout doing something that they love? Absolutely not. Dance Central is based on the idea, and it succeeds in a big way. The potential to bring an emphasis on health and wellness into games with Kinect-based motion control is not lost on the team at ICT, and is just as important a demonstration as gaming. Aside from cardiovascular exercise, the team is using the camera built into the Kinect to design games that will aid in physical rehabilitation. Rehabilitating people who have lost motor functions, or providing physical therapy certainly wasn’t available at the device’s launch, but the programmers at ICT have no doubts that physical therapy is a very real application of Kinect: Fable creator Peter Molyneux spoke about just how much the Kinect would reinvent game genres, and perhaps this is one of the first signs of just how open-ended the development possibilities are with the device. Sony had voiced their opinion that the Kinect’s camera was a limitation rather than a chance to expand the sphere of gaming, but videos like these seem to suggest that the public doesn’t have the slightest idea what the Kinect will be able to do until it does it. Using the Kinect for games like WoW or other hardcore titles may not be for the hardcore, but neither is the device itself. It was clear before launch that Microsoft’s plan was to use the Kinect to expand the definition of gaming, and how people interact with video games through motion controls. In that sense, it would seem that Microsoft has already accomplished the feat, at least in principle, while opening up doors that many never realized. Whether any one of these single ideas turns out to be a successful use of the device, the fact that people keep trying to change the status quo means that, for the moment, the future is looking bright for the Microsoft Kinect. January 1, 2011 article found here by Andrew Dyce
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Virtual Reality Tele-rehab Improves Hand Function: Playing Games for Real Recovery Article found here January 12, 2010  INDIANAPOLIS -- Remotely monitored in-home virtual reality videogames improved hand function and forearm bone health in teens with hemiplegic cerebral palsy, helping them perform activities of daily living such as eating, dressing, cooking, and other tasks for which two hands are needed.
“While these initial encouraging results were in teens with limited hand and arm function due to perinatal brain injury, we suspect using these games could similarly benefit individuals with other illness that affect movement, such as multiple sclerosis, stroke, arthritis and even those with orthopedic injuries affecting the arm or hand,” said Meredith R. Golomb, M.D, M.Sc., Indiana University School of Medicine associate professor of neurology. A pediatric neurologist at Riley Hospital for Children, she is the first author of a pilot study which reported on the rehabilitative benefits of these custom videogames. This project was done in collaboration with the Rutgers University Tele-Rehabilitation Institute, headed by Grigore Burdea, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering. The study appears in the January 2010 issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. The researchers also reported that improved hand function appears to be reflected in brain activity changes as seen on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. The three study participants were asked to exercise the affected hand about 30 minutes a day, five days a week using a specially fitted sensor glove linked to a remotely monitored videogame console installed in their home. Games, such as one making images appear (“sliders”) were custom developed at Rutgers, calibrated to the individual teen’s hand functionality, included a screen avatar of the hand, and focused on improvement of whole hand function. “Popular off-the-shelf games are targeted to people with normal hand and arm function and coordination. These games don’t work for or benefit those with moderate-severe hemiplegic cerebral palsy and many other disorders that affect movement. They just aren’t made to be used by or improve hands that can’t pinch or grasp” said Dr. Golomb. In the future, physical therapists could remotely monitor patients’ progress and make adjustments to the intensity of game play to allow progressive work on affected muscles. In addition to meeting an unfulfilled need, this could potentially also save healthcare dollars and time. Typically, insurance or government program coverage for rehabilitation therapy for cerebral palsy does not cover teens. Long term physical rehabilitation is costly. And even if cost is not an issue, taking an adolescent out of school and transporting him or her to the hospital or rehab center puts stress on both the patient and their parents. These specially developed games motivated rehabilitation exercises in the home at a time convenient for the teens, broadening access to rehabilitation. The research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (part of the National Institutes of Health) and by the Clarian Values Fund. In addition to Dr. Golomb and Dr. Burdea, co-authors of the study are Brenna C. McDonald, PsyD; Stuart J. Warden, PT, Ph.D.; Janell Yonkman, MS, OTR; Andrew J. Saykin, PsyD; Bridget Shirley, OTR Michelle E. Nwosu, MBBS; and Monica Barkat-Masih, MBBS, M.D of Indiana University and Meghan Huber, B.S.; Bryan Rabin, B.S.; Moustafa AbdelBaky, B.S., of Rutgers University. The IU School of Medicine and Riley Hospital are located on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The Tele-Rehabilitation Institute is located on the Busch Campus of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. See the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation article and an accompanying video demonstration. Article found here
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Microsoft's Surface device being used as a platform for neuro-rehab testing for pediatric care. Matthew Holt from THCB is running the flipcam. VectorForm is the vendor Original video Article
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Article from Microsoft News Center CHICAGO – April 6, 2009 – Talking with a doctor is rarely easy. Patients might feel intimidated by the white coats and jargon, may forget the names of their medication, can misinterpret a diagnosis. To make the patient-doctor consultation more comfortable, collaborative and productive is the goal of an application developed by Texas Health Resources, which operates 13 hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Microsoft partner Infusion Development. Using Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Corp.’s first surface computer, the solution uses digital health records and images – along with video and diagrams – to make the doctor-patient consultation more productive, more understandable and less apt to result in mistakes. Texas Health Resources’ prototype is one of four Microsoft Surface applications for healthcare that Microsoft and its partners are demonstrating this week at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2009 conference in Chicago. Other partner demonstrations include an application designed to help patient scheduling and improve overall hospital efficiency, especially when experiencing a rush of patients such as in the aftermath of a natural disaster or construction accident; a tool for assisting children who need rehabilitation; and an application aimed at improving patients’ check-in experience at clinics or hospitals.  Infusion Development’s application allows a physician and patient to collaborate over digital health records, radiology images, prescriptions and other health records. Graphical images of the human body and videos help a physician explain and diagnosis. Click for high-res version. Together, these demonstrations showcase how the innovative Microsoft Surface natural user interface (NUI) can provide healthcare providers with solutions to solve difficult hospital-management or patient-care problems. “From the first time I saw Microsoft Surface, I thought it was just made for healthcare,” says Dr. Bill Crounse, worldwide health senior director for Microsoft. “It doesn’t feel like you’re using a computer – it’s much more intuitive and easy to use, for both patients and doctors.” Touch or multi-touch computing is not new. Microsoft Surface takes massive multi-touch and amplifies it like a stadium loudspeaker. Inside a Surface unit, five infrared cameras peer up at the screen while an adjacent projector bathes the tabletop with infrared light. Once fingers or hands touch the tabletop, the infrared cameras “see” the reflection and tell a Windows Vista-based computer running Surface what those hands or fingers are doing, and how the application should respond with the corresponding content. This vision-based technology allows Microsoft Surface to respond dozens of different touches. So several people can individually or collaboratively work on a single Microsoft Surface. While doing so, they can open documents or images, zoom them to larger or smaller sizes, rotate them, copy them from one user to another or close them – all with a tap or the flick of a finger. Microsoft Surface’s vision system also allows it to identify objects placed atop it, so it can communicate with a smart phone or tagged card that might contain digital records. From the time of the first Microsoft Surface deployment in summer 2008, healthcare was seen as a key market. “We thought Microsoft Surface offered real value to emergency departments, in-patient and ambulatory care, and children’s hospital environments,” says Randy Fusco, chief technology officer for Microsoft’s Health & Life Sciences Provider Industry in the U.S. “Patients have a choice where they receive care, and healthcare systems are looking for innovative ways to differentiate themselves around patient experience. Microsoft Surface can help healthcare providers do that.” So the Microsoft Surface team worked closely with partners and healthcare providers to develop four innovative applications that address different scenarios within healthcare.  MEDHOST’s emergency department dashboard, built on Microsoft Surface, gives physicians and nurses at-a-glance updates about how many patients are arriving, the severity of their medical emergency, what radiology or laboratory orders are pending, the number of beds available, and much more. Click for larger image. One is the need for collaboration among medical peers, or with patients, so the right decisions are made at the right time. The ability of Microsoft Surface to recognize dozens of different touches from people working all around the unit makes it a natural collaboration tool. In some cases that collaboration is 1:1 – such as Texas Health Resources’ doctor-patient application. But in other cases collaboration may need to take place among multiple caregivers. Take a sudden medical emergency that sends dozens of patients to the emergency room. To create a digital “traffic cop” that manages the flow of patients throughout the hospital, Microsoft Gold Partner MEDHOST has developed what it calls the Operational Visibility Engine. Using Microsoft Surface and powered by Windows Presentation Foundation, the Operational Visibility Engine delivers a graphical image of the hospital layout, tracks digital records of incoming patients, and maps them to specific floors or beds. Says Patricia Daiker, an ER nurse who now is vice president of marketing for MEDHOST, “In my experience, when there is a disaster you have a handful of patients about whom you need to make very quick decisions related to their treatment and finding a bed for them. With this application a doctor or nurse can look at all the patients coming in and decide how best to handle them, rather than dealing with them one at a time in typical triage.” Another powerful aspect of Microsoft Surface is object recognition. Much like a RFID or bar code, Microsoft Surface can recognize tagged physical objects placed on the display. A potential example of this technology can be seen in MEDHOST’s application, which provides a hands-on solution to provide real-time information to caregivers and decision-makers in times of a crisis. Texas Health Resources also looked to incorporate object recognition with its Microsoft Surface application. So imagine, in the future, a doctor or patient being able to see their medical information collaboratively by placing a tagged personal patient card on Microsoft Surface. Chicago-based Allscripts, a Microsoft partner and one of the largest suppliers of electronic health records (EHR) software for physicians’ office and clinics, and Springfield Clinic developed a suite of applications for Microsoft Surface. The applications can provide an interactive overview of the clinic or hospital when a patient arrives, or provide a personalized interactive care plan. With the personalized interactive care plan, the physician’s notes can be incorporated in the EHR and made available for the patient to review, all with a flick of the finger, in outpatient settings. The goal is to ensure that patients learn more, understand their diagnosis better, and have a sense that the physician is using the best technology available. “It’s pretty well known that when a patient is better educated during their visit with a doctor, they have a better experience and better satisfaction,” says Steve Schwartz, senior vice president for Allscripts. “We think our app really creates a ‘wow’ factor for patients, and also helps them make more of the visit by really collaborating with their doctor, rather than just being talked at.” A third aspect of Microsoft Surface that software developers in healthcare find intriguing is the ability to have direct interaction with the content (e.g., use fingers to move or write/draw on it). This can be beneficial for solutions geared toward children who require rehabilitation for physical or cognitive problems. One of the challenges faced by physicians working to rehabilitate these youngsters is accurately tracking how a child’s motor skills are faring from one week to the next. Children, meanwhile, may find traditional rehab exercises less than engaging in a video-game world.  To help children in rehabilitation, Vectorform created an application for Microsoft Surface that lets rehabilitation specialists design their own tests for patients. A youngster’s ability to complete the test can be recorded and used to track progress. Click for larger image. So Vectorform – a global design and gaming specialist and a Microsoft partner – teamed with the Cook Children’s Health System in Fort Worth, Texas, on an application that gives rehabilitation specialists a powerful new way to work with children. Typically, says Tim McKendrick, a senior project manager with Vectorform, rehab specialists ask children to perform tasks such as tracing a line through a maze the specialist might draw on a piece of paper. Often the test is timed, and repeated daily or weekly to monitor a child’s progress. “We computerize that,” says McKendrick. “The caregiver can create their own tests on Microsoft Surface using its drawing capability, set their own parameters for success, and easily repeat the test and track the child’s progress.” The tests can incorporate a variety of game-like motifs, such as animals or balloons, so the child can find it more engaging. The excellent graphics capabilities on Microsoft Surface and its ability to recognize and react to a wide variety of touches helped make the application possible, McKendrick says. And it allows the patient and caregiver to really collaborate on tests and gauge progress, as both can work on a Surface unit at the same time. Among the Microsoft partners who have developed applications for Microsoft Surface, the device gets high marks for its flexibility and the relative ease with which applications can be devised. Says Eric Rock, chief technology officer for MEDHOST, which developed the ER applications, “I give a lot of credit to the SDK (software development kit) at Microsoft. The Surface SDK is phenomenal and really opens up new opportunities for navigating and using the Surface interface.” Developers also like the fact Microsoft Surface uses software they already use, such as Windows Vista and Windows Presentation Foundation. Still, Rock notes, it’s a challenge for developers to work with Microsoft Surface simply because it is such a change from the usual PC interface. “Microsoft Surface forces developers to forget the keyboard and mouse,” he says. “They need a completely different mindset.” Another hurdle in healthcare, an industry that has largely resisted digital technology due to costs and implementation challenges, is that a Microsoft Surface unit runs $12,000 – before an application is developed for it. And it’s a fairly large piece of equipment, a factor in cramped waiting rooms or offices. But the opportunities Microsoft Surface presents developers in the medical world are proving to be difficult to resist. As emphasized by Vectorform’s McKendrick, “Touch technology is here to stay, and Microsoft Surface offers many advantages because of its optical system and its ability to recognize multiple users and tagged objects. It allows a very patient-focused experience, and has seemingly limitless flexibility.” Article from Microsoft News Center
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What is Microsoft Surface? Article from Microsoft.com Microsoft Surface is a revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, helping people interact with digital content in a simple and intuitive way. With a large, horizontal user interface, Surface offers a unique gathering place where multiple users can collaboratively and simultaneously interact with data and each other.  For Users: Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content. Leave the mouse and keyboard behind. Surface lets you grab digital content with your hands and move information with simple gestures and touches. Surface also sees and interacts with objects placed on the screen, allowing you to move information between devices like mobile phones or cameras. The result is a fun, social and exciting computing experience like you’ve never had before. For Businesses: Microsoft Surface provides tremendous potential for businesses to improve communication, and be more efficient in how they deliver information and services to their customers. The intuitive and approachable interface is easy to learn and the familiar software platform makes it easy to manage, too. The multi-touch and multi-user capabilities create an incredibly collaborative experience, where sharing and exploring information is easier than ever. What are the key capabilities of Microsoft Surface? Microsoft Surface has four key capabilities that make it such a unique experience: - Direct interaction. Users can grab digital information with their hands and interact with content on-screen by touch and gesture – without using a mouse or keyboard.
- Multi-user experience. The large, horizontal, 30 inch display makes it easy for several people to gather and interact together with Microsoft Surface - providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
- Multi-touch. Microsoft Surface responds to many points of contact simultaneously - not just from one finger, as with a typical touch screen, but from dozens of contact points at once.
- Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the screen to trigger different types of digital responses – providing for a multitude of applications and the transfer of digital content to mobile devices.
Seeing is believing Take a look at the applications available for Microsoft Surface and videos of the product in action. Learn more about how to buy Microsoft Surface. How does Microsoft Surface work? Microsoft Surface uses cameras and image recognition in the infrared spectrum to recognize different types of objects such as fingers, tagged items and shapes. This input is then processed by the computer and the resulting interaction is displayed using rear projection. The user can manipulate content and interact with the computer using natural touch and hand gestures, instead of a typical mouse and keyboard. Article from Microsoft.com
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article from LiveScience By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer Today's U.S. military recruits enjoy an arsenal of simulators and video games that sharpen their fighting skills and may even protect them from the mental stresses of combat. But experts caution that virtual reality could also help mask the reality of war.  That has not stopped the military from embracing video games to recruit and train a young generation of gamers who typically play commercial games such as "Modern Warfare 2," which passed $1 billion in sales in January.
"The Army has really taken a hold of gaming technology," said Marsha Berry, executive producer for the game "America's Army 3." "America's Army" represents the official U.S. Army game that competes with commercial offerings such as "Modern Warfare 2" by also featuring online multiplayer shootouts. The free-to-play game has become a more effective recruiting tool for the Army than all other Army advertisements combined, according to MIT researchers Such blurring between entertainment and war may have unwanted consequences, according to Peter Singer, a Brookings Institute defense expert. He argues in a Foreign Policy journal article that the "militainment" phenomenon can lead to greater distortions in how people view war. In real life, "any military person will tell you that there's a blend of incredible intensity and stress combined with long years of boredom," Singer pointed out. "But is a game going to capture that?" But such reality-based video games could help prepare recruits for the mental horrors of war, help train them for the real thing and even help prevent cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers. [Related: World of Warcraft Video Game Succeeds in School] The virtual Army wants you Very few games have the ambition to convey both the physical carnage and mental anguish of warfare, such as was shown in the recent Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker" or HBO's Emmy-nominated World War II series "The Pacific." Instead, they have more narrow goals, such as attracting today's recruits through familiar entertainment. One Army recruitment station in the Philadelphia area featured war-themed video games and helicopter simulators aimed at attracting urban youth. It closed down last month, but the Army hinted that it might adopt a similar approach for future recruitment stations. "America's Army" continues a strong run with more than 11 million registered users having played over 260 million total hours and counting since 2002, including enlisted soldiers who play under their real-life unit designations. "The whole concept behind the game was that it was not going to be about scoring based on kills," Berry told LiveScience. "We wanted it to represent Army values and career options." Gamers can undergo virtual Army training around barracks and shooting ranges, as well as fight in teams against opposing players in online multiplayer combat. Players who faithfully complete tasks, such as medic training, even get perks in multiplayer games, such as being able to revive wounded comrades during online battles. The game does have some quirks that reveal how tricky it is to reproduce combat realities on an imaginary platform. In online games, players always view themselves as U.S. Army soldiers and see the opposing team of players as a fictional enemy. By contrast, an upcoming commercial game "Medal of Honor" allows players to fight one another as either U.S. Army or as the Taliban insurgents of Afghanistan. Killing in "America's Army" also represents a fairly clean affair compared with the bloodier kills of "Modern Warfare 2." That allowed the game to earn a "T for teen" rating, as part of its recruitment tool value. "We wanted kids to be able to start playing at 13," Berry explained. "If they haven't thought about the Army by the time they get to 17, it's probably not something they'll do." Boot camp 2.0 The recruitment of young gamers has forced some changes in military training. Earlier this year, the Army announced that it would reshape basic training to accommodate a new generation of tech-savvy recruits who may have more gaming skills than physical fitness. On the upside, specialized games and simulators have become cheap and effective virtual training grounds that supplement the usual physical drills. The Army trains its soldiers on game-like simulations such as "Virtual Battlespace 2" or even noncommercial versions of "America's Army." Training versions of "America's Army" can integrate real military weapons or hardware with the game software, so soldiers can physically hold the launch tube of a Javelin antitank missile and practice firing it in a virtual setting. By the time soldiers get to the live fire exercises with weapons, many are already fairly proficient from having trained on the simulators, Berry said. The most futuristic example of game-like training comes from Raytheon, a giant in the defense industry, and Motion Reality, the company responsible for the 3-D technology behind the Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar." The two companies developed a free-roaming simulator called VIRTSIM, which allows participants wearing full gear and virtual reality goggles to physically fight their way through a virtual setting. The participants can toss physical objects such as mock grenades that explode in the virtual setting, and even experience a low-level Taser-style shock when a virtual enemy manages to shoot them. Preparing the mind for war Such virtual training may go beyond training military recruits to operate weapons, spot roadside bombs, or clear rooms of enemies. It could also protect them from the mental horrors of war, according to Albert "Skip" Rizzo, a University of Southern California psychologist. With funding from the U.S. military, Rizzo's team in the virtual reality lab at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies wants to prepare military recruits for mental trauma before they are ever deployed overseas. It is developing virtual re-creations based on the stories told by returning veterans. "What we want to create is something that pulls at the hearts of people," Rizzo said. "Maybe there's a child lying there with the arms blown off, screaming and crying. Maybe your action kills an innocent civilian, or you see a guy next to you get shot in the eye with blood spurting out of his face." At the most upsetting moment, the simulation would freeze and allow a virtual character to come out and walk the player through the situation. That character might look like a gunnery sergeant, a Buddhist monk, even a former schoolteacher – whatever helps the recruit think calmly after experiencing the virtual trauma. "The rationale is you want to teach people this stuff when they're in a state of arousal so that they're more likely to access that learning when they're in a similar state" in real life, Rizzo said. Such stress-resilience training, or emotional coping, has existed in U.S. military training for a couple of years. But there's a limit to how much time new recruits can spend in workshops or in the re-creation of an Iraqi village at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Southern California. A virtual simulation or game could allow more recruits to train themselves in stress resilience during the many months leading up to actual combat. Less is more for veterans Ideally, the preparation would help prevent future cases of PTSD among veterans. As many as 20 percent of returning military personnel may suffer from the disorder or from major depression, according to a 2008 study by the RAND Corp. For veterans with PTSD, even poor graphics in virtual reality simulators can trigger powerful memories. Psychologists have found that a crude visual representation allows the mind of the patient to fill in the details based on personal experience (similar to the notion popularized in the Hollywood blockbuster "Inception"). "If you leave it a little bit open, then you have more space for the patient's own imagination and their own insertion of experiences in the world," Rizzo said. When Vietnam War veterans took part in virtual reality therapy for PTSD during the late 1990s, the simulation graphics "sucked," according to Rizzo. Even so, "when the patients got out of the [virtual] copter, a couple of them were describing Vietcong shooting from the jungle and water buffaloes in the rice paddies. None of that was in the simulation – they had blended in their own experiences." Rizzo hopes that the new stress-resilience training can trump the need for PTSD therapy and allow future military veterans to return to civilian life with fewer nightmares. He wants to convey a sense of reality closer to certain war films, such as "Platoon" or "Saving Private Ryan," rather than the films he watched as a kid, in which combat appeared as a sanitized black-and-white struggle. "We're training people to cope with the jobs they've been asked to perform and come back intact," Rizzo said. "Nobody goes to war and comes back the same, but when they return, are they capable of holding a job and loving their wife and kids? That's what our aim is, to make the return home as smooth as possible." Blurring the lines Before that can happen, Rizzo and his colleagues must figure out how to strike a balance in the realism of their simulations. Too polished a presentation may lull recruits into thinking of the simulation as just another commercial game such as "Modern Warfare 2," where death only has the consequence of making players wait to reappear in the next match. "We don't want it to look like a game [recruits] have already played and become habituated to," Rizzo said. Brookings Institute defense expert, Singer wondered if militainment could also lead to a growing sense of detachment among military recruits during actual combat. He spoke with military officers who observed as much about some of the latest recruits. "This might be the essence of this new era of militainment: a greater fidelity to detail, but perhaps a greater distortion in the end," Singer wrote in his Foreign Policy article. That distortion could become magnified among the majority of gamers playing "America's Army" or "Modern Warfare 2," who only experience warfare as what appears on their computer and television screens. Few will end up deploying overseas to experience the reality of war in places such as Afghanistan for themselves, according to Singer. "This is especially the case as you have now almost two generations (X and Millennials) for whom the draft is just some paper card you get when you are 18 and never ever hear about again," Singer said in an e-mail. "It completely changes the way they think about war." The militainment trend also takes place during a time when those killed in the wear rarely show up in U.S. news, and only arrive home as flag-draped coffins. As a result, most gamers may only ever see the casualties of modern wars as pixels on a screen – there one moment, gone the next. article from LiveScience
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article from LiveScience By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor
The video game Tetris may quell flashbacks of traumatic events in a way that other kinds of games can't, researchers have found. The curious effect might have to do with how the shapes in the game compete with images of a traumatic scene when it comes to getting stored in one's memory. Tetris, one of the most popular video games of all time, involves moving and rotating shapes falling down a playing field with the aim of creating horizontal lines of blocks without gaps.  In earlier work, scientists at Oxford University in England found that playing Tetris after traumatic events could reduce flashbacks in healthy volunteers. The hope of this research is to reduce the painful memories linked with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Tetris therapy To see if this effect was found only in Tetris or with other games as well, the researchers compared Tetris with Pub Quiz Machine 2008, a word-based quiz game. The investigators began by showing volunteers a gruesome film with traumatic images of injury and death, such as fatal traffic accidents and graphic scenes of human surgery. After waiting a half-hour, in the first experiment, 20 volunteers played Tetris for 10 minutes, 20 played Pub Quiz and 20 did nothing. By examining diaries the volunteers kept for a week afterward to record any instances of flashbacks to the film, they found Tetris significantly reduced flashbacks while Pub Quiz significantly increased them. In a second experiment, the wait was extended to four hours, with 25 volunteers in each group and matching results. "Our latest findings suggest Tetris is still effective as long as it is played within a four-hour window after viewing a stressful film," said researcher Emily Holmes, a research clinical psychologist at Oxford University. "Whilst playing Tetris can reduce flashback-type memories without wiping out the ability to make sense of the event, we have shown that not all computer games have this beneficial effect — some may even have a detrimental effect on how people deal with traumatic memories." The split mind To explain these unusual results, think of the mind as having two separate channels of thought. One is sensory, dealing with perceptions of the world as experienced through sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, while the other is conceptual, responsible for combining sensory details in a meaningful way. These channels generally work in harmony with each other — for instance, we might see and hear someone talk and quickly comprehend what that person is saying. However, after traumatic events, the sensory channel is thought to overwhelm the conceptual one. As such, we are less likely to, for example, remember a high-speed traffic accident as a story than as a flash of headlights and the noise of a crash. These sensory details then intrude repeatedly in a victim's mind in the form of flashbacks, often causing great distress. Past research suggested there is a timeframe of up to six hours after a trauma in which one can interfere with the way traumatic memories are formed in the mind. During this window of opportunity, certain tasks can compete with the same mental channels needed to form those memories, in much the same way it can prove hard to hold a conversation while solving a math problem. As such, the Oxford team focused on Tetris, a task that demands visual attention and visual memory. They suggest the game achieves its beneficial effects regarding flashbacks by competing with traumatic details on the sensory channel. On the other hand, Pub Quiz might compete with the conceptual channel, reinforcing sensory details of traumatic events. "These laboratory experiments can help us understand how unwanted flashback memories may be formed," Holmes told LiveScience. "This can help us better understand this fundamental aspect of human memory. It may also lead us to think about new ways to develop preventative treatments after trauma." However, she cautioned that this is early stage laboratory research, and that further work is needed to move this into clinical situations. The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 10 in the journal PLoS ONE. article from LiveScience By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor
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original post on msnbc.com Life-sized, 3D video game allows patients to ‘be the joystick’ 
Israeli Shalev Malki, who is partially paralyzed in his arms and legs goes through physiotherapy treatment at the Chaim Sheba Rehabilitation Hospital near Tel Aviv, Nov. 29, 2006. TEL AVIV, Israel — On most days, a tumor on Zvulun Muola's spinal cord keeps him confined to a wheelchair, but today he is standing on a small, wooden dinghy gliding downstream, navigating between the islands of a tropical paradise. Muola, whose legs are partially paralyzed, is among a handful of disabled patients in Israel using the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment. The virtual-reality system puts patients at the helm of a life-size video game, forces them to use atrophied muscles and teaches the basic skills necessary to recover from severe injuries and disorders. "It gives more confidence," said Muola, standing shakily on a moving platform, sandwiched between a walker and a physical therapist. "It's hard at the beginning but once you get the hang of it ... it improves stability and helps the patient trust himself." The $650,000 computer system at the Chaim Sheba Rehabilitation Hospital near Tel Aviv is the only one of only a dozen worldwide in clinical use. The others are still in the research phase. But doctors using the system say it can cut rehabilitation times and make the process far easier by helping distract patients from their pain. More than half of the Tel Aviv hospital's patients — most of them amputees — were maimed by suicide bombs or wounded in last summer's war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Sgt. Idan Borovski, 23, was wounded in a Lebanese village when shrapnel from a Hezbollah anti-tank missile ripped through a crowd of soldiers, killing nine and injuring 30. The metal shards severed the nerves and muscles in Borovski's foot, leaving him with little feeling and limited use of his leg. "For one thing it was fun," Borovski said of his two training sessions with the virtual-reality system. "You are actually in a game. You are playing. You don't notice the pain and you can work harder." The system immerses the patients in a fully reactive virtual and physical environment, using tiny sensors placed on the body, 12 high-speed infrared cameras, a moving platform that reacts to the patients' weight distribution and a life-size 3-D projection screen. The system simulates daily activities like taking a walk in an urban environment, driving a car, hiking up and down a mountain or — like Muola on the dinghy — steering a boat. The scenarios teach patients to stay balanced and react to situations they will face in the real world. The dinghy can be steered by leaning in left or right, forward and back, between a slalom of checkpoints and land masses to reach the finish line. In another scenario that takes a patients down a winding road, the platform lurches with every curve, tilts back and forth over hills and simulates various terrain with vibrations. The patients also can try to "catch" objects floating by — with sensors on their hands — while maintaining balance. Dr. Itzhak Siev-Ner, head of orthopedic rehabilitation at Sheba, said virtual reality helps his patients retrain their brains and bodies to function and works much faster than traditional rehabilitation methods. "The system helps to strengthen muscles, to improve your stability, balance, and to translate it to everyday life," he said. "The integration of all these activities — and this is oversimplifying it — enhances the plasticity of the central nervous system." Siev-Ner said the video game scenarios, which keep scores to allow doctors to monitor progress, distract the patient from pain and involve more complex coordination than normal physical therapy. "It's like the patient is the joystick of the system ," Siev-Ner said. "Although it can be fun, after 20 minutes they are sweating to hell." Since Sheba's system came into regular use in 2005, it has logged 600 hours of rehabilitation time with more than 50 patients. Dr. Michael Yochelson, medical director for brain injury programs at National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C., said there is a bright future for virtual reality in medicine. "It's something that looks very promising and there's a lot of research going on in that area now," he said. "It allows for reproducing different scenarios that we can't necessarily reproduce in the clinic." It is no accident that the first clinical use of virtual reality is in Israel, where a perpetual state of war has led to a constant flow of casualties. "Unfortunately there is a quite a good industry here," said Oshri Even-Zohar, the Israeli who first conceived the system in 1990 but said the necessary computer technology wasn't available for seven years. Even-Zohar built the prototype in the Netherlands using a grant from the European Commission. A new scenario being developed will be set in the aisles of a supermarket, where the patient will have to pick items from the shelves and bring them to the virtual cashier — a decision-oriented game particularly helpful for recovery from brain injuries. Over the next two years, next-generation models will be installed in Brooke Army Medical Center in Houston and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., Even-Zohar said. Yochelson, the American doctor, said it is a sign that the U.S. market for innovative rehabilitation is also growing. "We always see a lot more advances in amputee care and prosthetics during war time," he said. "Israel has the population to support that. Unfortunately, now our military does too." original post on msnbc.com
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Starting July 16, Wii Games 2010 will begin! Compete in Bowling - Standard Game, Coin Battle (Co-Op), Hula Hoop, Mario Kart Time Trial, and Basketball 3-Point Contest. Get your family and friends together to form a team, complete head-to-head against others. If you can't get to an event site there is a home download kit. Games4Rehab would like to know what you think about the 2010 Wii Games. Are you going to the games or downloading the home kit? Looking for people to be on your team? Find friends here at Games4Rehab.org and when the games are over please share your experience. Register here 
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article from Telegraph.co.uk Professional computer gamers have the reactions of fighters pilots but the bodies of 60-year-old chain smokers, according to tests comparing them with international athletes.  A university academic conducted a series of physical and psychological tests to determine whether playing on computers could be defined as a sport.
Top gamers can earn tens of thousands of pounds a year in prize money and sponsorship but academics have warned the cost to their health could be devastating. Dr Dominic Micklewright, from the University of Essex, put several ''elite cyber-sportsmen'' through their paces to see how they compared to professional athletes. The head of Sport, Performance, and Fatigue Research Unit also wanted to determine whether video gaming should be classed as a sport. The cyber-sportsmen had mental sharpness and psychological traits comparable to 'real' athletes, and reacted to visual stimuli almost as fast as fighter jet pilots. But their fitness levels were shockingly low and comparable to people either much younger or much older than their actual age. One leading gamer in his twenties appeared to be slim and healthy with a physique similar to an endurance athlete. But tests revealed he in fact had the lung function and aerobic fitness of a heavy smoker in his sixties. Dr Micklewright blamed the gaming lifestyle of spending 10 hours a day in front a computer screen and warned youngsters against such a sedentary lifestyle. He said: ''Someone of this age should be much fitter, but perhaps this is the occupational hazard of the professional gamer who can spend around 10 hours a day in front of a screen. ''It is always difficult to say how these things will develop, but it could have long term health implications such as an increased risk of heart disease. ''Screen time with children has a very strong correlation with childhood obesity and risk factors with heart disease later in life.'' But Dr Micklewright was equally surprised by the number of characteristics gamers did share with top athletes. He said: ''Their reaction time, motor skill, competitiveness and emotions were pretty close. ''Elite athletes have unusually high levels of positive feelings and low levels of negative feelings such as depression and fatigue. ''We saw similar characteristics in gamers, albeit not quite as pronounced.'' Dr Micklewright said video gamers would benefit from balancing playing video games with getting fitter but their sedentary lifestyle meant they should not be classed as athletes. He said: ''There is an inextricable link between the function of the mind and the body. ''Gaming shares some characteristics with sport because both are competitive, skill-based and governed by structured rules. ''But the main distinction which precludes gaming from being a sport is the lack of physical exertion. ''However, in the end sport is socially defined and there are sports, such as snooker and darts, which you might argue are on the boundary. ''Like video games these require very high levels of skill, but are relatively sedentary and not physically demanding.'' Dr Micklewright conducted the research for The eSportsman, a Radio Four programme set to be broadcast on Friday. He ran a series of physiological and psychological tests on gamers at the Gadget Show Live in April at the NEC Arena in Birmingham.
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from ExerGame Lab’s posterous 
Here is the Dave Graveline Into Tomorrow Interviewing me (Stephen Yang) at Games For Health 2010, Boston, MA. It was the second time I've been interviewed by Dave and it was great to catch up with him and let him know what's been happening in the ExerGame Lab. Ben and Beth did an awesome job pulling off the biggest and best Games for Health Conference - and if you're interested in making next year's even better - please get in touch so that we can make it happen. Posted via email from ExerGame Lab's posterous Posted By Stephen Yang to ExerGame Lab at 6/07/2010 10:41:00 PM
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By Nadia Oxford at whattheyplay.com, June 5, 2010  People are often very shy about asking differently-abled individuals questions about their condition, especially questions about how they complete day-to-day tasks. Iain Hanson from Scotland, who was paralyzed in an accident when he was 15, is happy to demonstrate how he manages to game.
According to his YouTube profile, Hanson landed wrong in a bouncy-castle amusement structure four years ago. The accident left him paralyzed from the chest down, and though he has some use of his arms, his fingers remain numb. In a video demonstrating his skill at Modern Warfare 2, Hanson explains how he gets the job done:
"For [Modern Warfare 2], I use my left palm or ball of my hand for the left stick, have to take my hand off it to use my thumb for the D-pad. I vary between using my right hand i a similar fashion for the right stick, and twisting my left hand over so I can aim while I shoot. I press L1 with my right index finger as I press R1 to shoot with the base of my thumb (kinda where it turns into a thumb from being wrist). For L2 and R2 I use my right middle finger whilst aiming the right stick with my left hand. For the buttons on the right I use my thumb, having to take my hand off of the right stick or trigger buttons.
"So that's basically it, that's how I roll! (no pun intended)"
Take a look at the video below. Game on, Iain.
Check out their Website
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by Jeff Groves at escapistmagazine.com Back in the hazy days of my childhood, I remember a letter from an enthusiastic Mario fan in Nintendo Power. His thumb muscle had been severed, so he learned how to play Super Mario Bros. 3 with his feet. That was a dedication to gaming that was on a level which I could barely comprehend. My thoughts returned to that incident as I looked over AbleGamers.com, a website devoted to helping disabled gamers. How much dedication, I wondered, does it take to overcome a disability to play games? Could some of them be the most hardcore gamers I could find? The exact definition of a hardcore gamer is up for debate, but I believe that every definition has this criteria: How much trouble are you willing to go through in order to play a game? Whether it's honing your skills for hours or learning the game mechanics' formulae, dedication and perseverance are the mark of a hardcore gamer. And what requires more dedication than overcoming a physical limitation in order to play a game? read full article here We want to here what you have to say so please share
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 What we’ve been waiting for.
The University of California in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pioneer Portfolio have been working on a fantastic health games site this year for their national program Health Games Research. Health Games Research funds research to advance the innovation and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies to improve health. Just recently they launched the bulk of their website content in the form of a database, the Health Games Research Database, which has been getting quite a bit of attention these last few days. Why? Because it’s the largest database of health games and related conferences, organizations, publications, and resources to date. read full article at Health Gamers HealthGamers.com
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from gamefwd.org Written by Nathalie Caron  Encompassed in the new Games Beyond Entertainment Week, the 2010 Games for Health conference runs from May 25-27 in Boston, MA. The annual event will feature six thematic tracks, including a new Games and Rehabilitation track and it features over forty sessions and sixty speakers. Building off the experience and successes of the past six years, the conference is strengthening its role as a key resource in the field of video games in health care.
“This annual conference has become the premier event attracting the top minds in game development and health care,” said Paul Tarini, senior program officer and team director for the Pioneer Portfolio at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the conference's key partners.
Certain study areas are definitely maturing, finds Games for Health Project founder Ben Sawyer. "They're building upon a basis of work that really exists. You're seeing second generation work go forward and new trails start to fire off," said Sawyer in an interview with Game Forward. More...
Conference organizers are also seeing a greater interest in the Games for Health movement. "This year we have more companies requesting to work with us to do introductions to key researchers and developers. That has gone up three or four fold from last year," said Sawyer. "People want to meet the kind of attendees we attract."
Big names are also making a formal entrance into the Games for Health space. The conference is opening with a keynote presentation by Dr. Richard Marks, Senior Researcher at Sony Computer Entertainment. He will be discussing the relationship between gaming, play and exercise. Marks will also explore the psychological dimension of seeing yourself on screen combined with the physical interaction of having a controller in your hand--referencing his work on the new PlayStation Move controller. With the prevalence of the Nintendo Wii in health care games research and rehabilitation particularly, Sony and its new motion technology have the potential to become serious contenders in the field.
 Getting involved with the rehabilitation sub-community this year is an exciting new opportunity, explains Ben Sawyer. On May 26, the conference will be hosting the first Games and Rehab track, with sessions entirely devoted to game-based sensorimotor rehabilitation efforts.
The track notably features Dr. Henrik Haptop Lund from the Center for Playware, Technical University of Denmark. Lund is the creator of therapy tiles (PDF), a robotic system using playing for rehabilitation. His talk will touch on the design of technology used to enhance playful rehabilitation for different groups from cardiac and stroke patients, to hospitalized and disabled children.
Other rehabilitation sessions will focus on human computer interfaces; the study of Parkinson's patients using Dance Dance Revolution; home-therapy games for autism; the making of a mobile rehab application; as well as virtual reality cycling for people with asymmetrical movements. Several presentations will look at uses for the Wii for such things as a balance tool for high fall risk individuals, sports injury rehabilitation, active aging and physiotherapy, recovery from burn injuries and post-traumatic stress reduction through cooking games, and for playing your way to a health back and body.
The Active Gaming track, the Cognitive and Emotional Health track and two open tracks will span both days. One of the Active Gaming presentations will explore the health effects of drumming games. A few will look at exergames, the kind of energy expenditure they create, their incorporation in schools, and how they can help with pain management. Another will present the main design principles to follow to create an active game.
The track devoted to cognitive and emotional health will explore subjects like the use of casual games to fight depression, anxiety and cognitive decline; the creation of a suicide prevention game and the behavioral effect of video games on ADHD patients. Another session will discuss the development of a game for depression--one of three collaborative projects born from conversations started at last year's conference.
The track's featured talk comes from Dr. Jayne Gackenbach, dream researcher and professor at Grant MacEwan University, in Edmonton, Alberta. She will speak of her work on video game players and the development of consciousness, exploring the effect of games on sleep patterns.
 "She is a researcher in dreams looking especially at REM sleep," explains Ben Sawyer. "She started getting intrested in games because her son started playing them. She looks at dreams to see the relationship between how they confine memory and how they are regenerative. Sleep and dreams go hand in hand; sleep and health go hand in hand."
The open tracks feature such varied subjects as designing games for impact--a panel hosted by HopeLab; teaching health game design; a review of game-related injuries and illnesses; the use of video games in psychology; how off-the-shelf games can influence child development; as well as presentations on audio games and games for cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, HIV prevention, cystic fibrosis, flu, surgery and even to fight tooth decay.
Games for Health founder Ben Sawyer will also take the floor to explore the concept of healthy video gaming and gamers. He will mainly look at the environment in which children play and the attitude that kids and parents have toward gaming.
Scheduled on May 27, the Simulation, Education and Modeling with Game Technologies track will host sessions on military combat and care training systems; a game for national incident management; and a case study on creating a game about malaria.
Games Beyond Entertainment Week
This year for the first time, Games Beyond Entertainment Week will aim to promote networking, marketing, business development and knowledge sharing between different segments of the video game industry. Building on the Games for Health conference, the week includes the returning Game Accessibility Day and Virtual Worlds and Health Day, both in their third year, on May 25.
Game Accessibility Day will focus on case studies successfully addressing the video gaming needs of individuals with various disabilities and notably includes a "Hacker Hardware Challenge." The Virtual Worlds and Health Day will attempt to redefine a field which has plateaued in recent years, explains Ben Sawyer. Understanding what virtual worlds in health care mean today and taking into account the popularity of social games, the day will focus on this changing landscape.
The week-long event will also introduce new events mainly focused on the serious games space. The first annual Serious Games Festival & Conference is set for May 24 and will explore design notions, market penetration and learning outcomes of serious games. On May 25, the Out & About: Mobile Serious Games Conference will offer a variety of presentations on mobile health and learning apps.
Also on May 25, two serious games workshops will give attendees the opportunity to discuss hands-on development of mobile and serious games. Lastly, the Emerging Markets in Video Games Symposium, also scheduled for May 25, is expected to focus on new and non-traditional market opportunities for video games and their technologies.
While these events are early in their life cycle, Sawyer hopes to see some of them expand into longer, full-fledged events in coming years. "We're trying to establish this idea that each year in Boston, wrapped around our core Games for Health offering, we can spawn other conversations about how games are living beyond just entertainment helping developers, companies, non-profits find the people they need to be able to take advantage of what games can do as technologies and as design pools to solve problems," says the lead organizer. gamefwd.org
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A new partnership with Nintendo and the American Heart Association will begin labeling specific games as "active-play video games." read article here 
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