Get diabetic children interested in their health through video games

by David Hinkle { Nov 14th 2007 at 4:40PM }

According to Australian news network Channel 10 News, a new diabetes management device known as Glucoboy has hit the market. The device was designed by Minnesota native Paul Wessel, who has a son diagnosed with the disease. He said he came up with the concept after his son forgot his Game Boy on a family trip and the whole gang had to go back to retrieve it, but would constantly hide the device used to test his blood sugar (as the child of a parent with diabetes, we've seen how hard testing can be over the course of a lifetime).

The Glucoboy not only allows the user to test their blood sugar, but also get their game on. By performing the test, points are rewarded that allow the user to unlock games, which are played by inserting the Glucoboy cartridge into a Game Boy Advance or DS Lite (in its GBA slot, naturally). Personally, we can't think of a better way to get to kids, who often never travel without their GBA or DS nowadays.

For more information, be sure to visit the Glucoboy website.

Tags: cartridge, diabetes

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Goldilocks @ Nov 14th 2007 5:03PM

This actually is a good idea. Provided the games are really cool. But I imagine at first the sheer novelty of it could get a kid in habit of doing tests, even if the games do grow boring.

Nintendo tried something similar -and less innovative- to this before. Bronkie The Bronchiasaurus was not as interactive as the Glucoboy. Nor as successful.

Loxias @ Nov 14th 2007 5:39PM

@Goldilocks: Or even Captain Novolin, which was actually a SNES game with a protagonist who had diabetes (although it's arguable that a lot of the elements of the condition were trivialized in the game.)

As a person who, despite how healthy he tries to be, is pretty much doomed to diabetes later in life due to my gene pool crawling with it, this could not be a more awesome idea. It's hard enough to get a lot of my adult relatives to actually care about their Type II Diabetes as it is, so I can't even imagine the extent of a diabetic child's apathy. Discipline of any kind is just plain hard for the young, especially when it involves blood and needles. I'm earnestly hoping for the commercial success of the product.