New video game company aims to develop therapeutic games
Devolver Digital founder Mike Wilson is partnering with medical device expert Ryan Douglas to launch DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, a video game company that will both develop games that can treat health conditions. The company will also help outside companies identify existing games that have therapeutic value, the founders say.
Video game-based tools can help with conditions like depression and ADHD, research shows. DeepWell Digital Therapeutics plans to build on those studies. “There was an amazing amount of science that had already been done,” Douglas says. “We started to recognize exactly how therapeutic these games already were.”
Often, a game used as a therapy would be designed as a therapy first, with fun or engaging gameplay elements layered on top, he says. But DeepWell wants developers to build games in the most engaging way possible — and then go in and check to see how they might help treat health conditions. “Developers have figured out how to bring an engagement level and get folks to do things with an intensity that on the medical side we’ve had a hard time with,” Douglas says. “The fun is really the most therapeutic thing.”
Video games have been hailed as the future of medicine for at least a decade — they’d be accessible and easy-to-use tools that could bring treatment into people’s homes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first prescription video game, cleared to treat kids with ADHD, in 2020. The agency cleared a handful of other digital therapeutics in the past few years, and the industry got a boost during the COVID-19 pandemic when the FDA let companies market digital health products without going through the normal review process.
DeepWell has plans to develop its own
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