WHCC Affordable Health Innovations

The WHCC Affordable Health Innovations Exhibit and Awards Program is pleased to welcome Books of Hope, which has revolutionized health communication with people who can not read through its speaking books.  The low level of literacy is a major problem worldwide. Illiteracy severely reduces the effectiveness of any literature distributed to the many thousands in need of health care education.

The Speaking Book is a world first, and has received many awards and nominations.

Books of Hope partnered with SADAG, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, to design and produce interactive, multilingual Speaking Books that can be seen, read, heard and understood by the reader regardless of their reading ability.

The Speaking Book combines the latest sound chip technology featuring a sound track read by well-known local celebrities in the local language, with a durable laminated hard backed book, to take the reader on a step-by-step guide to wellness.

Books of Hope plans to have some of its speaking books on hand for the exhibit, and we look forward to seeing them in action.

Medications, radiation and chemotherapy have been shown to fight cancer, but what about a video game? The WHCC Affordable Health Innovation Exhibit is pleased to welcome HopeLab to the program to explain how a game can do just that.

The RedWood City, Califironia (just south of San Francsico) non-profit has developed a special video game that can help adolescents and young adults with cancer. In Re-Mission™, players pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing side effects associated with cancer and cancer treatment. Research shows that Re-Mission is an effective tool for young cancer patients, and HopeLab is now developing a new version of the game that builds on the  positive results.

Re-Mission™ is based on the vision of HopeLab founder and board chair Pam Omidyar. Early in her career, Pam worked as a researcher in an immunology lab. As a video game enthusiast, she had the idea that a video game for teenagers with cancer might play a positive role in helping them fight their disease. HopeLab researchers worked with video game developers, cancer experts, psychologists, and young people with cancer themselves to create this groundbreaking game.

Prior to the release of Re-Mission™, HopeLab completed an unprecedented randomized, research trial to evaluate the efficacy of the game. Results showed that a specially designed video game can have positive impact on health behaviors in young people with chronic illness. Specifically, playing Re-Mission improved treatment adherence and produced increases in self-efficacy 2, and cancer-related knowledge for adolescents and young adults with cancer. Data from the study was published in the August 2008 edition of the medical journal Pediatrics.

Re-Mission is distributed by HopeLab to young people with cancer, their families and caregivers free of charge. As of April 2009, more than 142,000 copies of Re-Mission had been distributed to 81 countries worldwide.