Kids with powerful diseases like cancer must monitor and record how they feel through the day. By studying these records, doctors can follow the course of the illness and adjust their treatment. Kids aren’t the best record-keepers, though, and sick kids even less so. To help, doctors commissioned the creation of an iPhone app called “Pain Squad” to turn reporting into a game. This game is based on the theme of a police force tracking down sources of pain and discovering what works to fight it. SickKids has the story.
So for all those people who said games were useless, now video games are helping kids survive their battles with cancer. Games really do have a power to improve the world.