Marble Mania saving lives?

The Guardian reports that Wii game Marble Mania (UK title: Kororinpa) is being used as a training aide to increase the dexterity of surgeons. Thursday's report focuses on Jeff Henke, a second-year resident surgeon at the Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, whose training over the past twelve months has included playing games on the Wii that make optimum use of the console's 'Wiimote' motion-sensitive controller.

Dr Mark Smith, director of the hospital's Simulation Education and Training Center said:  "The surgeons develop an increased efficiency, less errors, more fluid movement - basically they're just better...The whole point about surgery is to execute small, finely controlled movements with your hands...we saw people using the Wii and noticed the precision of some movements looked very similar."

Kahol also pointed out that non-gaming surgeons quickly catch up to their gaming counterparts, but stresses that not all Wii games that make use of the Wiimote are  equally useful for developing manual dexterity, claiming that "You don't gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket".

The game of choice for surgeons training for complex and intricate procedures such as laparoscopic surgery proved to be Marble Mania, where tracking of the moves used in game-play showed a 90% correlation between the motions necessary to play the game well and those necessary to use a laparoscope.

"A laparoscope is inserted into the abdomen through small incisions. There's a camera in the probe and surgeons work off monitors. Very small instruments are used and they are controlled by the smallest of hand movements." says Smith.

Marble Mania was launched for the Wii in December of 2006 in Japan, with UK and US releases following in 2007, and involves tilting virtual marbles on tables to direct them to their goals.

The Guardian [Why a Wii could be good for your health]