{"id":556,"date":"2022-05-13T14:55:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T14:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=556"},"modified":"2022-05-13T14:55:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T14:55:45","slug":"deepwell-dtx-is-a-therapy-focused-game-studio-from-the-co-founder-of-devolver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=556","title":{"rendered":"DeepWell DTx is a therapy-focused game studio from the co-founder of Devolver"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Therapy has an engagement problem. Despite the benefits of treatment plans and at-home exercises, people generally resist anything that feels like work, and this impedes the mental-health recovery process across the board. Clinicians have attempted to bridge this gap with various devices and reward systems, but still, it\u2019s often incredibly difficult to motivate patients to help themselves.<\/p>\n

Video games have the opposite problem. Players can spend hours immersed in a single digital experience, seated in one spot and lost in their own world, but they\u2019re often branded as \u201clazy\u201d for this behavior. Video games are widely viewed as a waste of time, even with psychological benefits of play.<\/p>\n

So, why not smash these industries together and see what happens? <\/p>\n

<\/figcaption>DeepWell DTx<\/figure>\n

DeepWell DTx isn\u2019t about gamifying therapy tools or building digital experiences based on strict medical templates. Instead, the studio will analyze existing games for potential mental health benefits and, in some cases, work with interested developers to enhance these mechanics. The team will then secure approvals from regulators for these games to treat mental health issues including PTSD, anxiety, depression, OCD and addiction.<\/p>\n

This is where Douglas\u2019 expertise comes in. He’s the founder and former CEO of medical device company Nextern and he’s secured FDA approval for more than 25 medical devices over the past 15 years; he knows how to navigate this regulatory process and he sees games as a natural fit. He and Wilson started working on DeepWell about 18 months ago, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a very specific regulatory pathway for this work,\u201d Douglas said. \u201cSo, a couple key things \u2014 agencies have done a lot of work in the last couple years to figure out how software as a medical device and specifically digital therapeutics are going to work. The FDA has been collaborative in that work. And then in this emergency time, there has been more opportunity to do the work that we need to do to get these in people’s hands as quickly as possible. It’s arduous but not impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Additionally, DeepWell DTx will provide a framework for players to recognize these benefits as they play \u2014 whether that\u2019s a label on the game\u2019s storefront, a welcome screen or another digital signal \u2014 allowing them to adjust their mindset before pressing start.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re super excited largely because of some intellectual property Ryan filed long before he met me, a couple years before he met me,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cWe believe we’ve got a system built to enable game developers \u2014 eventually other media creators, as well \u2014 to work their magic and in a way that is already quite beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n

It takes one whole minute before Wilson drops the phrase \u201cdigital psychedelics\u201d into the conversation. This is kind of his thing; he\u2019s an evangelist for psychedelics, with endless can apply starting today. There\u2019s also an in-house development arm of the DeepWell beast, and its first game is already halfway through development, with a few others in pre-production. The first DeepWell games are due to start rolling out in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Therapy has an engagement problem. Despite the benefits of treatment plans and at-home exercises, people generally resist anything that feels like work, and this impedes the mental-health recovery process across the board. Clinicians have attempted to bridge this gap with various devices and reward systems, but still, it\u2019s often incredibly difficult to motivate patients to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[737,735,115,739,736,64,738,740],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}