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When a video game is backed by clinical trials, you could charge a ton of money for it. Like $100s per month that insurance plans will negotiate down to fewer $
by medymed 11y ago
When a video game is backed by clinical trials, you could charge a ton of money for it. Like $100s per month that insurance plans will negotiate down to fewer $100s, but still 100s, per month. At least for a few years.
The difference is that games, unlike drugs, are not mechanistically patentable (correct me if wrong please). Someone could create a close-enough lookalike, and sell it for $1. And if it really works, which I sort of don't believe, then it would improve access to real therapy. A lookalike would not have some of their proprietary evaluation system based on ever-questionable psychology metrics, but I bet a few hours with the game would show the gist of it: "You're paying attention! High score!" "You're old and also can't rearrange the blocks like you used to," -->poor executive function and memory, maybe dementia, etc
And yet given the ubiquity of the standard cognitive battery tests like MMSE and Minicog, I do question whether any therapist would ever recommend a substitute. The difference is these tests are often printed out on paper and royalties are not paid to the owners, whereas a tighly controlled Saas model would really cut down on illegal distribution and encourage alternatives.
- Mz 11y agoAny thought on how a developer can adequately monetize a game so as to pay their own bills without charging ridiculous sums to begin with? I mean, say you know how to do something like this, you want to promote health, you loathe the way our current medical system bleeds patients for money. How do you find the sweet spot?
- medymed 11y agoYou could build a similar game, make no specific claims (or get a small focus-group to test it out), get a psychologist or two interested with a free trial, then transition to a respectable price later if it is adopted by the clinical community without FDA aproval. Or a modification of that ptocess, still without FDA approval. I don't think psychotherapy in general is FDA approved, as far as I can see, so I'm not even sure what the point of FDA approval is other than proving a principle of therapeutic effect to charge a high price and get access to the psychiatry market in addition to the psychology market.
- Mz 11y agoOh, I was thinking of a different condition. My question is more general than your answer seems to infer. But thank you.