For prevention (and treatment).

At the Games for Health Conference last year, Humana announced its newest venture, Humana Games for Health (HG4H), an online world where users can play video games to keep their minds and bodies fit.  Their hope was to engage consumers through the use of a most popular technology: online video games.  Since then, Humana has received a huge amount of press with the success of their school-based initiative HorsePower Challenge, the release of their custom game Freewheelin’ Cycle Challenge and a recent partnership with two independent health game firms, Playnormous and HAPPYneuron.

The HG4H team is a big sponsor again this year at the Games for Health Conference.  HealthGAMERS even got a nice comment from their Innovation Center Director Paul Puopolo (thanks Paul!).  All this got me thinking…what other big name health insurance outfits are using health games?

Other health game big-hitters.

Off the top of my head, here are the other insurance companies and their corresponding non-profits that are in the health games space:

• Aetna Foundation – Funded the creation of Food Fury, an online nutrition health game for 3rd-5th graders
• Cigna Healthcare – Teamed up with non-profit HopeLab to create Re-Mission, a video game for young adults with cancer
• Kaiser Permanente – Distributor of The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective, an online school-based nutrition program where players must help characters learn how to eat better and be more physically active.
• West Virginia Public Employee Insurance Agency and Blue Cross Blue Shield – Funded a study in 2005 which examined whether the use of Dance Dance Revolution reduced healthcare insurance costs. ( and Accordia Insurance Company also big contributors)

Any others?

I didn’t do any extensive research to create the list above.  Any others you can think of?  I think it would be interesting to see how many we can come up with.  The involvement of health insurance companies seems to be a growing trend in Games for Health right now.