Doctors in the United
States can now prescribe a game as a medicine. Akili Interactive’s EndeavorRX,
formerly known as Project EVO, has come up with a game for children with ADHD.

The game has been
authorized by the Food and Drug Association and the organization is now asking
doctors to use it as a medicine for kids between ages 8 and 12 years old, suffering from ADHD. It was tested for seven years and 600 children with
ADHD were given this game to see whether it is effective or not.

Source: Interactive’s
EndeavorRX

After further
consideration, the company came to the conclusion that it does work as a medicine
because one-third of kids treated “no longer had a measurable attention deficit
on at least one measure of objective attention”. These improvements came after
the children played the obstacle-dodging and target-collecting rounds for 25
minutes a day, five days a week for four hours.

“Improvements in ADHD
impairments following a month of treatment with EndeavorRx were maintained for
up to a month,” the company cites. The most common side effects of the game
were frustration and headache but as compared to the other traditional drugs,
these reactions were quite mild.

Source: Youtube

The doctors worked
closely with the game developers and say that even though the results were
satisfying, they “are not sufficient to suggest that AKL-T01 should be used as
an alternative to established and recommended treatments for ADHD.”

It can be considered a
breakthrough in both medicine and the video gaming industry as it provides a
positive distraction to the kids suffering from ADHD and is also a nice mental
exercise.

Akili will soon be
considering the launch of the game but right now only a limited number of
families are allowed to enroll under the FDA’s relaxed COVID-19 enforcement.