Humana, a health benefits company, has launched a new service called HumanaGames which shows how playing video games can improve health.

The website features various examples of how schools, companies, senior care centers, hospitals and physiotherapy centers can use video games to improve the health of people.

Humana had done an an interesting experiment on combining games and health with students from Broward County, Florida in which students were made to use dance mats as a replacement for mouse and game controller to play video game.  In another experiment, 100 students from Louisville, Kentucky played a game to move their virtual school bus across the world and at the end of the game they had collectively walked an amazing distance of 6364 miles.  In this game, the students wore pedometers and the scores measured from their activity levels through pedometers were used to power the bus movement in the game.

I think the use of gaming for health is a nifty idea and highly contradicts the current perception of bad effects of gaming on health.  If all goes well, you will soon find people playing WoW using dance mats.

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