Health IT, Pharma

Oculus + Kinect + Novo Nordisk = A diabetes education game set in a virtual patient’s body

Novo Nordisk teamed up with UK digital healthcare agency emotive to put together a neat diabetes education tool that allows healthcare professionals to get a glimpse inside the body of hypothetical patient.

Novo Nordisk teamed up with UK digital healthcare agency emotive to put together a neat diabetes education game that allows users to get a glimpse inside the body of a hypothetical patient.

Using Oculus VR and Microsoft Kinect, virtual reality experience Diabetes Voyager takes users to the heart, brain and vascular system in the body of someone with diabetes. He or she completes challenges related to disease management, like achieving normal HbA1c levels, avoiding hypoglycemia and losing weight.

It was unveiled in March at the Diabetes UK conference and for now is being demoed to healthcare professionals at conferences. But emotive said there has been discussion about the potential of the technology to engage younger, perhaps apathetic patients and encourage medication adherence.

That’s the same idea behind HopeLab’s Re-Mission game, which seems to have had some success effecting positive health behavior change in young cancer patients.

Oculus VR isn’t on the market yet, but the healthcare industry is already dreaming up ways to use it. Let’s hope some of those ways eventually make it to patients.

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