Doctors in the United States can now prescribe a game as a medicine. Akili Interactive's EndeavorRX, formerly known as Project EVO, has come up with a game for children with ADHD.

The game has been authorized by the Food and Drug Association and the organization is now asking doctors to use it as a medicine for kids between ages 8 and 12 years old, suffering from ADHD. It was tested for seven years and 600 children with ADHD were given this game to see whether it is effective or not.

Source: Interactive’s EndeavorRX

After further consideration, the company came to the conclusion that it does work as a medicine because one-third of kids treated “no longer had a measurable attention deficit on at least one measure of objective attention”. These improvements came after the children played the obstacle-dodging and target-collecting rounds for 25 minutes a day, five days a week for four hours.

“Improvements in ADHD impairments following a month of treatment with EndeavorRx were maintained for up to a month,” the company cites. The most common side effects of the game were frustration and headache but as compared to the other traditional drugs, these reactions were quite mild.

Source: Youtube

The doctors worked closely with the game developers and say that even though the results were satisfying, they “are not sufficient to suggest that AKL-T01 should be used as an alternative to established and recommended treatments for ADHD.”

It can be considered a breakthrough in both medicine and the video gaming industry as it provides a positive distraction to the kids suffering from ADHD and is also a nice mental exercise.

Akili will soon be considering the launch of the game but right now only a limited number of families are allowed to enroll under the FDA’s relaxed COVID-19 enforcement.