Originally published at: A video game just got FDA clearance as an ADHD treatment - Boing Boing
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OK so you have to get a prescription for this and it’s $99 for a 30-day prescription. And you need “refills.” $99 and a doctor visit to rent a video game for 30 days seems a little… predatory. But I guess that’s just what happens when you get into bed with the US medical system.
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Wow… That’s, just, wow…
I really hate what medicine has evolved into. I am very grateful to be at the sunset part of my career rather than the beginning. Lord, what a grifting mess.
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Character creation, world building, and challenges…sounds like a mix of Pokemon and Minecraft. I’m not sure I need my oldest son compulsively telling us the most minute details about his new quest, creature, or world he has built in yet another program.
I realize ADHD is a broad spectrum of things, but for my son’s specific traits I’m not sure how this would really help. A virtual world is not a substitute for real life.
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Thought this was just going to be the Tetris thing again.
I have the vague impression that people have been trying to work on therapeutic video games for years and years now? I’m guessing none of them has ever substantially caught on because they’re never demonstrably better than games deliberately designed as games.
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Not $99 a month — the monthly cost is $25, but a year costs $130. As I said in the article, I still think this is too much money (likely because of your correct concerns about the pharma industry!). But I was also trying to evaluate the product itself on its own terms.
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It may help in that the gameplay is limited to 25 minutes per day. So it could ultimately reduce screen time, and possibly maybe help with working memory and concentration, too.
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I don’t quite understand from that trailer how it’s supposed to help anything. Look, I can get hyper focused on a video game until I get my fill. I am bad at finishing them some times. Like Enter the Gungeon I slowly grinded hundreds of hours to get gud and not just beat the game once, but multiple times to unlock characters etc. Then I have some famous examples of starting a large game and not finishing it (FF VII, though that was due to losing the save file!)
I would really like to try Adderall, but it seems like its hard to get the drug sometimes and I already sometimes have that issue with my painkillers and don’t want to go through it more than once… sigh.
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Oh I see; I didn’t follow the link to the OTC version. I went and did a google search and found my way to EndeavorRx, which is in fact priced at $99 for a 30-day prescription.
So the OTC version is as little as $10.83 but as soon as you get insurance companies involved, the price increases almost ten times over, plus whatever it costs to see a doctor and get the scrip
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Yeah that’s insane, especially considering that the Rx version is EXACTLY THE SAME, except with the data/progress tracking moved into a separate app (so your doctor/parent can see how you’re doing).
I do have other concerns about the company that I wasn’t able to fit into the article, mainly because they’re all the same as any of my general complaints about any pharma company.
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Or… $10 to download any number of endless runner games already available on the iPad, maybe another $10 for a similar village building game.
I’d be interested in the theory behind how this game is supposed to help with ADD/ADHD, as opposed to any number of similar looking games (based on the trailer). 
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I go into a bit more detail in the article about both the company’s explanation for how it helps with ADHD, and what some outside psychology/psychiatry/neuroscience professionals have to say about that. The company used to have a staff clinician with a PhD and a focus in ADHD who I interviewed about the technology…although he has since been laid off, after the company was purchased by a larger tech pharma company, which is definitely not concerning at all 
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They may just be the first company to try this.
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I read your article, which I thought was interesting. But their explanation of the benefit of the game appeared to me to be more along the lines of alternative way of calculating the score and reporting info back to your HCP. You address a lot of my questions, if not necessarily directly.
For example: my daughter had an endless runner game that had challenges to, for example, roll over all the blue squares, or collect only coins with stars which granted points, and avoid non-star coins which deducted points, while avoiding barriers that would end the run. The challenges would change on full completion of each run. Since it was crapware, she could only “die” a certain number of times, then the game wouldn’t work unless you paid with jewels you bought with real money, or you let a certain amount of time pass.
Apart from reporting back to her pediatrician and scoring on an attention scale instead of a point system, both games appear to function the same.
While I don’t doubt that games can be beneficial in a treatment plan for ADHD, my question is more about what makes this game especially suited to that task, as opposed to a similar, non-FDA approved game. Perhaps the innovation lays in the ability to share collected data with a clinician, which can’t be done with other endless runners.
Oh, geez! That’s too bad, both for the staff clinician, and well as future innovations, as it appears to be a novel approach to treatment.
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I haven’t been able to read Thom’s article yet, but my initial take on the issue of “what makes this game different or better than others” is that it doesn’t necessarily matter or even need to be better, for the intents of FDA approval. The difference btwn this and other games is that this game went through the approval process, and can now be prescribed. That’s a big deal in our healthcare landscape.
For example, a few years ago there was a pilot in one state to get home energy audits and certain follow-up recommendations qualified for health insurance. The audits include a lot about indoor air quality, and the beneficial impacts of good air quality on health are well-researched. If they could be prescribed by a doctor, they could be covered by insurance. For many families with sick kids, they couldn’t afford it otherwise.
Auditors had to hold a certification, though. So one professional might be able to provide an identical audit to another, but if one of them is certified and the other is not, insurance would only cover the audit done by the certified person. The only difference between them is that one jumped through the hoops to provide the public with some confidence that their work would be comprehensive and meet quality standards.
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