Old Folks Games | P2P:- Are you, like, getting a bit doddery? And if you are, does your mind need, like, stimulation?

This, then, is for you.

European trials of an interactive game platform, “resembling a vintage video game table,” specifically designed for vintage people, have completed their first phase, says e-Health Europe.

“The new video game table looks like a small dining table with an embedded flat panel display, around which players sit and play a series of games with one another,” says the story.

No doubt, there’ll be special stands for IV drips.

“The suite of games and the prototype game table have been successfully trialled at centres in Spain, Norway and the UK,” says the story, going on »»»

The European Union funded ElderGames project, based in Spain, has developed video games designed to be fun to play and enable older people improve their cognitive, functional and social skills.

The project was set up three years ago under the European Union’s Information Society and Technology’s (IST) sixth framework research programme.

As part of the project, the ElderGames team identified and developed games that older people would find interesting, would help maintain socialisation and use important cognitive skills.

heh

The team, “created a suite of 20 games for senior citizens and caregivers and developed software that tracks the progress each player over time. The aim is to provide caregivers with early warning of cognitive changes.”

According to Amparo Ruiz, an occupational therapist in Galicia, Spain who helped supervise some of the trials, “The elderly people like it when they play and feel integrated into the new technologies.

“It’s also very important that I can get information about their attention, memory and other functions while they are playing, and then choose games that emphasis the areas where they have problems.”

Commercial games companies in Europe, North America and India are now said to be showing an interest in the system.

I’ll bet.

Jon

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e-Health Europe - ElderGames targets silver surfers, May 27, 2009