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BEIJING, Oct. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- On the afternoon of September 30, Perfect World, a leading developer and operator of interactive entertainment products in China, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York. This was the result of in-depth discussions between Perfect World and Columbia University on the applications of interactive digital entertainment in medical rehabilitation and the role it plays in social development.
On the morning of the same day, a delegation led by Perfect World CEO Xiao Hong visited Columbia University's Department of Computer Science as well as the neuroscience and environmental health science laboratories at the university's Mailman School of Public Health, where they gained further insight into Columbia University's achievements in public health. Then, in the afternoon, Perfect World executives held in-depth discussions on how interactive digital entertainment can be used in healthcare with a group consisting of more than ten scientists from the Mailman School of Public Health. Eric Kandel, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, shared his research findings and was actively engaged in the discussions.
According to Xiao Hong, from wearable devices, amusement and fitness equipment to transportation and medical rehabilitation facilities, extending on to educational products, public consumption channels and man-machine interaction platforms, anything and everything can become a vehicle for digital interactive entertainment and inspire new thinking across a variety of sectors.
At this year's ChinaJoy, Xiao Hong noted that in the future the game industry will enter into and converge with the healthcare, consumer goods, education, communications, IT and finance sectors, in a move to enhance day-to-day life for an ever larger segment of the population, as games come to symbolize and represent a healthy approach to life.
The cooperation between Perfect World and Columbia University underscores this trend. The combination of games and medical rehabilitation can give full play to game technologies. Games allow patients to interact with objects through a variety of sensory stimuli naturally in a virtual environment, while rehabilitation software built with virtual reality technology exhibits more patience than a human trainer and delivers a more uniform quality of treatment, significantly reducing risks associated with human error. At the same time, this form of rehabilitation therapy will not only take the boredom out of the entire process but even put the patient into a better mood, going a long way in improving rehabilitation effects.
The combination of Perfect World's international cutting-edge game research and development with Columbia University's profound knowledge of neural medicine will drive the development of a new approach to medical rehabilitation that integrates the discipline with the concept and technologies of games. This creative and meaningful cooperation across disciplines opens up broader development prospects for the game industry and even the entire interactive entertainment sector.
In the future, the rapid development of scientific technologies will open up more possibilities for the game industry. It is anticipated that games will gradually become an integral part of daily life. Areas such as medical rehabilitation, wearable devices, amusement and fitness equipment, transportation facilities, medical rehabilitation facilities, educational products and facilities, public consumption channels as well as the man-machine interactive experience will become the new directions for the industry. Games will not only be for entertainment and relaxation, they and the technology that drives them will become part and parcel of every aspect of a global user's life.
