Steven Spielberg's Starbright Foundation and four technology companies have formed a partnership to electronically link bedridden children in hospitals around the world.
The idea is to reduce the isolation of severely ill children by letting them see and talk to family members and other patients using PC video-conferencing technology. They can also create 'avatars', or animated characters to represent themselves, and play with avatars of kids in other hospitals. This may be especially therapeutic for chemotherapy patients or others whose illnesses affect the way they look.
Some early studies suggest that such electronic diversions may sharply reduce the need for pain-killing drugs.
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