New Study Shows mHealth Games Help Children With Autism - And Their Parents
The program coordinated by Magellan Health and Mightier, a spinoff from Boston Children's and Harvard medical School, finds that mHealth games boost behavioral health outcomes in kids and reduce stress in their parents.
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- A recent pilot program has found that an mHealth game platform tailored for children with Autism not only improves behavioral health outcomes – it also reduces stress in parents.
The long-awaited results are from a program launched in 2020 by Mightier, a Boston-based connected health company spun out of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Arizona-based managed care company Magellan Healthcare. They point to a potentially promising future for mHealth games in helping healthcare providers and families improve care management and outcomes in the home.
“It is important to understand families as a whole, and to not only look at children’s symptoms when deploying an intervention,” Matthew Miller, senior vice president of behavioral health for Magellan Healthcare, said in a press release issued today. “Families using Mightier reported decreased stress, an increase in confidence, and an increase in access to resources relative to control – gains that point to improvements for the child as well as higher functionality for parents and families.”