Wii Sharpens Surgeons’ Skills, Aids Patients June 30th, 2009
Tom Amontree

If you think Nintendo Wii is purely fun and games, think again.  According to a recent report featured in Live Science, Wii’s broadband-powered gaming system offers more than simple entertainment.  It may actually enhance surgical skills by improving medical residents’ fine motor skills and performance.  When surgical trainees played Wii for an hour prior to performing virtual laparoscopic surgery, Wii-playing residents scored 48 percent higher than those who did not warm-up with the Wii.  The games were found to actually enhance residents’ speed and accuracy – qualities that are invaluable in patient surgeries.

Offering an inexpensive solution to on-the-job training or costly surgical simulators, Wii games designed to enhance surgical training are a tremendous asset.  Not only will this technology allow residents to train at home, there’s also significant potential to tailor games to emerging specialties, such as robotic surgery.  It may sound like a science fiction tale, but surgeons are increasingly using robots to assist with procedures or to help patients who live in remote areas.  Wii games tailored to this evolving area of medicine can help build the knowledge and skills to implement this revolutionary technology.

Patients, too, are benefiting from Wii.  Occupational therapists are tapping into the technology to exercise patients with Parkinson’s disease, and doctors at Weill Cornell Medical Center are engaging in “Wii-habilitation” to ease the physical and mental challenges facing burn-injury patients.  Doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital have even found a way to use the Wii to expedite administrative tasks, such as scanning the high-volume of patient X-rays and MRI images.

Everywhere you look, broadband is speeding incredible advances across America – and the medical community is no exception.  From innovative applications of existing technologies, such as Wii, to next-generation advances, broadband has limitless potential to revolutionize medicine and patient care as we know it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:45 am and is filed under Benefits of Broadband. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.