11/13/09
HopeLab – www.hopelab.org
Focuses on tweens and adololescents with chronic illnesses and helping them improve the quality if their lives.
Richard Tate, Dir of Communications and marketing for Hopelab spoke about how and why they got started. Pam Omidyar, wife of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, has a medical research background and founded Hopelab. She had the idea that a video game might help improve the lives of YA’s with cancer, allowing them to be in the driver’s seat blasting away their cancer and help them cope.
Hopelab’s first project was ReMission, a video game in which a nanobot named Roxxi as travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing side effects associated with cancer and cancer treatment.
Hopelab’s new project is gDitty, which focuses on childhood obesity. gDitty is an activity meter (think pedometer on steroids) and online rewards system. gDitty is worn by the tween to monitor the amount of activity. The tween can then hook gDitty up to their computer, set up an account, create a customized avatar, and upload all their activity. Each child can earn giftcards, free MP3’s and donations for their school via the gDitty rewards program.
(Supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
The entire presentation can be viewed or downloaded at:
http://www.innovationlearningnetwork.org/forum/topics/hopelab-1
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