Re-Mission

This is kind of cool: a video game aimed at teens and young adults with cancer.

It's called Re-Mission (cool name), and it aims to educate as well as entertain. The players follow a nanobot named Roxxi (sexy name), who travels through the bodies of cancer patients. As a nanobot (that is, very, very small robot -- a product of that nanotechnology that I write about occasionally), Roxxi is able to get into very small spaces to do battle. Like an video game hero, Roxxi goes through different levels, fighting bacterial infections and other side effects of cancer and its treatment. The kids learn a little something.


The game was created by a company called HopeLab, and they did something neat after they created the game -- they ran a clinical trial to see if it would do what they'd hoped it would do. They had 375 patients at 34 medical centers receive a computer. Half of the patients recived a computer with a game; they other got a computer with the same game plus a version of Re-Mission. The results showed that the patients who played Re-Mission "maintained higher levels of chemotherapy in their blood and took their antibiotics more consistently than those in the control group, demonstrating the game’s impact at a biological level. Participants given Re-Mission also showed faster acquisition of cancer-related knowledge and faster increase in self-efficacy." They published the results in the medical journal Pediatrics.

Best of all? The game is free. Order it through the link above.

I've seen a demo of the game (I didn't order it; it's for "young adults," which, naturally, gets cut off at 39. As with so many cool cancer-related things, I was diagnosed 6 months too late to get in on it).

(Really, anyone can order it, even if you're old like me.)

Anyway, I've seen a demo, and it's pretty cool. But, Cancer Geek that I am, I'm even more fascinated by the clinical trial that they ran. That kind of kicks butt.