More than a game: New wave of video games have health benefits

Video games are moving out of the basement rec room and into the world of medicine, with more physicians using them for training or for aiding treatment.

By John McCormack, AMNews correspondent. July 23/30, 2007.

Moselle Brotman, DO, a Riverside, Ill., ob-gyn, played her fair share of video games while growing up in the 1980s. She still likes electronic games, although her busy schedule doesn't allow for much more than an occasional -- but spirited -- Pac-Man challenge.

Like many other physicians, Dr. Brotman has, for the most part, kept her gaming and doctoring worlds separate. But she started to see how gaming and medicine could meet when she recently played "Trauma Center: Second Opinion" with her 8-year-old son, Ben, and his 9-year-old friend, Matt.

The game requires players to perform surgery, from repairing shattered bones to fixing perforated lungs or failing hearts. The game is produced for the Nintendo Wii gaming system, which has remote devices that require the surgery be done by a player moving his or her hands and arms, rather than using a controller, making the surgery seem more realistic, even when players acquire such unrealistic tools as a magic "healing touch."

"The game is a lot of fun. And I could see how the boys were actually learning some very basic surgical concepts," says Dr. Brotman, who works with her partner, ob-gyn Vybert Greene, MD, in a private practice that serves patients at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

While there has been plenty of attention and discussion on the negative impact of video games, from their potentially addictive qualities to their effect on the obesity rate, a growing number of gaming advocates within the profession are trying to figure out what good things games have to offer physicians and patients. The effort is growing stronger in part because the latest generation of physicians grew up with video games, and many of their patients are comfortable with them.