Innovation & Technology April 8, 2010, 11:00AM EST

Diabetes Is No Fun, but It Can Be a Game

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Bayer's new device for kids is a game and glucose test rolled into one

The Bayer-Nintendo alliance is part of a broader push by the drug industry to harvest good ideas from unconventional sources, says Carolyn Buck Luce, global pharmaceutical leader for consulting company Ernst & Young. In November, Sanofi-Aventis U.S. (SNY) launched an iPhone app called GoMeals, which helps diabetics track the nutritional content of foods they eat and locate restaurants that serve meals in keeping with their dietary restrictions. The app, which is free, has been downloaded 63,000 times. Games and apps "represent a major shift from being product-centric to being patient-centric," says Buck Luce.

The video game industry has been pushing into health-related entertainment for more than a decade. One of the first efforts around diabetes was a 1995 game for Nintendo systems called Packy & Marlon, featuring two diabetic elephants who taught kids the importance of maintaining glucose levels. Among children who played it over a six-month period, emergency-room visits dropped by 77%, according to a 1997 paper published in the journal Medical Informatics by communications expert Debra Lieberman, one of the game's developers. Diabetic youngsters in the study who played standard shoot-em-up fare showed no such results. If anything, staying glued to a sofa went against doctors' efforts to promote active lifestyles. For that reason, "a lot of families thought video games were evil," says Lieberman, now director of a program called Health Games Research, at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In the end, Packy & Marlon didn't meet sales expectations. "It was a fabulous science story and a not-so-fabulous business story," the researcher says.

In 1998, Japanese game company Konami launched Dance Dance Revolution, a music game for arcades that tapped into a physical fitness craze in Japan and the U.S. By 2005, global sales of the game in arcades and on consoles exceeded 7.5 million units. The next year, Nintendo released Brain Age for the DS system, aimed at improving baby boomers' mental acuity. The game sold upwards of 8 million units in its first year.

CHANGE THE CONTENT

Bayer's approach weaves a painful task, blood testing, right into the entertainment. Since launching Didget, Peterson's team has spent months talking to doctors, parents, and children to help refine the product and marketing plan in advance of its U.S. debut. Among the lessons learned: The content should be updated every six to ten months to hold children's attention, says Richard L. Stadterman, a vice-president of global research and development for Bayer. Some caregivers may be worried about their kids' sedentary behavior, but it's not a deal-breaker, he says. "Parents will do anything to help their children control their disease. They'll spend anything."

Paul Wessel, who had to mortgage his house three times while developing the first iteration of Didget, is pleased to see his brainstorm bearing results. "These children are kids first. They have diabetes second," says the inventor, who retired from Bayer last year. The illness doesn't have to ruin their lives, he adds. "I hope we can make the kids see that."

With Naomi Kresge

With Naomi Kresge. Weintraub is a senior writer for BusinessWeek's Science & Technology department.

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