DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, a video game startup founded by Devolver Digital founder Mike Wilson and medical device expert Ryan Douglas, will produce games that help treat health concerns. According to the founders, the company will also assist outside companies in identifying current games with therapeutic value.
According to study, video game-based technologies can aid with diseases such as depression and ADHD. DeepWell Digital Therapeutics intends to expand on these findings. « There had already been an incredible amount of science done, » Douglas explains. « We began to realize how soothing these activities were already. »
According to him, a game utilized as a therapy is often built as a therapy first, with pleasant or engaging gameplay components placed on top. DeepWell, on the other hand, wants creators to create games that are as engaging as possible — and then go in and see if they can help address health concerns. « Developers have worked out how to bring an engagement level and encourage people to do things with an intensity that we’ve had trouble with on the medical side, » Douglas says. « The most healing thing is to have fun. »
For at least a decade, video games have been heralded as the future of medicine, promising to be accessible and simple-to-use technologies that may bring treatment into people’s homes. In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will approve the first prescription video game licensed to treat children with ADHD. In recent years, the FDA has approved a number of different digital treatments, and the business received a boost during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the FDA allowed companies to advertise digital health goods without going through the normal approval process.
DeepWell intends to create its own in-house mental health games. It is working on one and hopes to have it ready in early 2023. (Douglas declined to discuss the idea in detail.)
However, the company also hopes to assist video game developers who do not have a specific health focus in identifying games that may benefit people’s health. Wilson has already worked with a number of renowned independent game producers through Devolver, which has published hits such as Hotline Miami, Inscryption, and Reigns. DeepWell would seek to see if there were any areas of a current or in-development game where a player had to make choices that would overlap with cognitive behavioral therapy procedures, for example. Then it might be used to determine whether it made sense within the game to ask the player to breathe or think in a certain way to increase the therapeutic potential.
« We don’t always make the game therapeutic. « The games are therapeutic, » adds Douglas. « We can also use it as a therapy. »
DeepWell would recognize certain scenarios within games and assist corporations in obtaining FDA clearance for the games as a medical device. The company wants to go through the FDA first, rather than developing games that would be advertised as « wellness » items but would not be able to make any medical claims. This is necessary so that the games can have explicit wording detailing their benefits, according to Douglas. « We wanted to be able to say what we needed to say in order to attract the folks we thought we might aid. »
One problem for digital therapeutics in general is evaluation; firms are still finding out the best technique to see if the games function consistently as treatments. The products are still in their early stages, and it will take time and extensive research before patients, doctors, and other stakeholders can be confident in how well video games compare to other mainstream treatment choices.
Digital treatments are not subjected to the same rigorous testing as pharmaceuticals. Drugs must pass a higher standard since they can be more dangerous than a video game if they don’t work or have dangerous side effects. According to Douglas, many of the games will go via the FDA’s « substantial equivalence » process, which means they may be cleared because they are comparable to current tools, rather than because they have been demonstrated to work on their own. He claims that DeepWell will build on existing study on video gaming and mental health. « Of course, we’ll analyze our goods as they become more available in the market, » he says.
Even if they are able to demonstrate that the games work well, Douglas says that therapeutic video games are not a replacement for therapists or other mental health interventions — the games are an additional layer, and the goal for the time being is to target mild and moderate mental health conditions. « Somethings can only be done by a highly well-trained clinician and therapist, » he explains. « However, there are many situations where there are holes where we can be useful. »
