Game developer Sam Glassenberg tells the story of Level Ex and how gamification is changing the way doctors learn medical procedures.

Technology already plays a massive role in healthcare, from AI in diagnostics to advances in 3D printing. But what happens when you bring gaming tech into the mix? Level Ex founder Sam Glassenberg is doing just that by creating video games to help train doctors.

“You can literally grab your phone and start doing an interventional bronchoscopy where a carpenter holding a bunch of nails in his mouth while he was hammering, inhaled one, punctured his bronchus. On your phone, it looks like a first-person shooter, super realistic. There’s blood, mucous, the tissues all move realistically, and you have to figure out how to remove the nail, which is actually a tricky physics problem, using the limited range of your scope,” he said.

“Essentially, what we’re doing is we’re using all the technology and neuroscience from games to sort of capture all of those challenges and help accelerate the adoption curve of new medical devices, new treatments, new guidelines, new methodologies, new approaches.”

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Words by Jenny Darmody