CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Can playing video games make you healthier? That’s the idea behind the “gamification” of health care, a big trend we’re seeing in the Boston tech scene and beyond. Companies and apps are using techniques from the gaming world to help people improve their health and fitness. For example, GymPact uses cash to motivate people to exercise. Healthrageous helps companies provide personalized fitness advice. And MeYou Health uses social-gaming rewards to help employers promote healthy behaviors. If all else fails, of course, you can try eating right and working out more.
 
Speaking of health care, the Biotechnology Industry Organization reports that the number of life sciences jobs in Massachusetts rose 3.4 percent from 2007 to 2010, even as national employment in the industry fell by 1.4 percent during the recession.
 
Our deal of the week is a $30 million funding round for Rethink Robotics, formerly known as Heartland Robotics. The Boston startup has raised more than $60 million to develop a new type of robot for manufacturing.
 
And finally, a N.H. company called Juliet Marine Systems claims to have built the world’s fastest underwater vehicle. The ship uses “supercavitation” — a big bubble around its hull — to reduce friction and glide through the waves. Sounds like a pretty good way to beat the heat this week.

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

BOSTON — At Brigham and Women's Hospital, retired high school teacher James Carelli Jr. talked about the pioneering heart surgery. In order to put himself through it, he needed faith.

 
BOSTON — Chef Ming Tsai says that given the growing obesity problem, it’s important to watch the ingredients we put in our food. The renowned owner of Wellesley’s Blue Ginger has a few gadgets up his sleeve to help with that.
 
“Cooking at home,” he explains, “some people are daunted by it. But I think if you have the right gadgets that are easily accessible, you can make tastier food easily, and at the end of the day, very healthy.”
 
One gadget Tsai recommends for easy cooking is the T-Fal ActiFry, a countertop electric cooker primarily designed for low-fat recipes. (T-Fal is one of the sponsors of Tsai’s television show "Simply Ming.") The bladed electric pot combines hot air and a small amount of oil to make a crunchy stir-fry out of, for instance, tofu and vegetables.
 
“You can make risotto, you can make stir-fries,” Tsai says — and it’s so simple, you can multitask while you’re cooking.
 
The other gadget indispensable to Tsai is his blender, especially in the summer. “Fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, boom, season it, you have a gazpacho. Mangoes and pineapples, you can make smoothies. You can get fruits and veggies to your kids without them realizing they're eating fruits and veggies,” he says.
 
Then there's the mandoline, which makes it easy to evenly slice vegetables: “If you don’t like to use a knife, you can get a perfectly sliced cucumber.”
 
Some of his tactics, however, require no gadgets at all. The biggest obstacle to healthy living, Tsai believes, is the portion-size problem. “You go to some restaurants and the plates are twice the size of my head. And people are wondering why there are so many obese children around,” he says. With children often told to finish what’s on their plates, it’s easy to lose sight of just how large portions have grown. Tsai’s advice is to resist the temptation of filling up by limiting meals to smaller plates.
 
Tsai is also a strong advocate of mindful eating: “When you’re eating, eat. It takes 20 minutes before your stomach is full, before your head registers that it’s full. Eat more slowly, mindfully. Think about the food. Think about that apple.”
 
Or, in the sing-song words of his famous mentor, Julia Child, “Bon appetit!”

> > WATCH Ming Tsai on Greater Boston

June 1, 2012

BOSTON — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates over 35 percent of Americans are obese. That astounding figure puts more than one third of the country at high risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
 
Some who are overweight or obese decide to make changes to reverse weight gain, including getting more exercise and adopting a new diet. For those who choose the latter, there is a head-spinning array of choices available: low-carb, no-carb, low sugar and high fiber, in addition to celebrity-endorsed diets and weight-loss programs.
 
But setbacks such as unusual foods, a new eating schedule or a complete ban on favorite dishes can derail even the best-intentioned dieters.
 
Food writer Peter Kaminsky was 35 pounds overweight when he decided to make a change. After he grew large on a steady stream of rich foods and large portions — the spoils of the trade — Kaminsky was forced to make a change.
 
“I was a chunky boy,” he said. “I topped out at 205."
 
So Kaminsky developed a diet that allowed him to enjoy the foods he wrote about without sacrificing anything he loved. He focused on maximizing flavor, minimizing portions and cutting out anything not strictly necessary. He wrote up the results in a new book, "Culinary Intelligence: The Art of Eating Healthy (and Really Well)."
 
One tactic that helped: “Get rid of processed ingredients because [you’re] going to put on weight very quickly,” Kaminsky said. “Buy the best ingredients you can afford — and that ain’t foie gras. That’s whatever’s in the farmer’s market.” Cook, or live with someone who does, and you can make those ingredients taste good.
 
Kaminsky’s approach — flavor first — has allowed him to honor his foodie roots while making crucial lifestyle changes. He said his diet is a way to maximize the “flavor per calorie” of everything he eats, from breakfast through dinner and every snack in between.
 
According to the author, the diet has paid off: “Now I’m 166 pounds.”

BOSTON — Hey, Boston…. don’t take this the wrong way, but Mayor Tom Menino thinks you could stand to lose some weight.
 
On Monday in the Fenway, Menino kicked off an ambitious new program dubbed Boston Moves for Health. Its goal: getting Bostonians to collectively drop 1 million pounds and travel a whopping 10 million miles (whether it’s walking, running, biking or swimming) over the next year.
 
“It’s wonderful that Boston was named the third healthiest city in the country last year,” Menino said. “But obesity is a challenge that remains here and around this nation.
 
“Today really is a call to action,” Menino continued. “So I encourage you to get out and get moving with your friends, neighbors and colleagues. Together, we’ll build community around community health.”
 
Preemptive health care
 
Boston Moves for Health is very much a web-driven endeavor. Participants can use a free but fancy new website, bostonmovesforhealth.org, to set exercise goals, keep track of their progress and even find local exercise options.
 
Andrew Dreyfus, the president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, one of Boston Moves for Health’s lead corporate sponsors, said the program is smart public policy.
 
“Unless we focus on health,” Dreyfus said, “we’re not going to solve our larger issues of healthcare affordability. One physician I talk to regularly told me, ‘You know, our whole health care system is focused on the visit, the doctor’s visit. But it’s actually between the visits where health care happens.’”
 
The kickoff had plenty of bells and whistles — from free pedometers to healthy box lunches to an imaginary calisthenics tour of Boston that got an enthusiastic response from the assembled crowd. But in Boston, the mayor’s plan got a more ambivalent reception.
 
“Is he going to start with himself?” a woman named Judy asked of Menino’s fitness push as she walked by Government Center.
 
“I think it’s my personal business what I eat,” she continued. “Although I do watch what I eat. I’m very careful!”
 
But Martha Manning of Boston said that private fitness is a legitimate public concern.
 
“People who have MassHealth and they go to a nutritionist every week — you’re paying for that,” Manning said.
 
Let the yoga parties begin
 
As Boston Moves for Health gets up and running, the administration is promising a host of accompanying initiatives – including yoga on City Hall Plaza (“yoga parties,” Menino called them during an appearanceon WGBH-TV’s Greater Boston) and the formation of walking groups in neighborhoods around the city.
 
To be clear, participation is voluntary. But if you’re thinking about taking a pass, Menino hopes that you’ll think again.  
 

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A couple of Cambridge companies are gaining ground with their regenerative medicine technology, which uses living cells and other natural materials to promote healing. InVivo Therapeutics says it will soon get the FDA go-ahead to start human trials of its implant for healing spinal cord injuries. Meanwhile, Pervasis Therapeutics, whose technology might help dialysis patients better withstand their treatment, is being acquired by the Irish pharmaceutical giant Shire. Both companies come out of the lab of MIT professor and prolific inventor Robert Langer.
 
In deals news, the venture capital numbers are in from the first quarter of 2012 and Bay State startups continue to outdo their rivals down the coast. In the last three months, VCs invested $650 million in 76 Massachusetts companies compared to just $333 million in 81 companies in New York state. Both states still trail California in VC investment, however.
 
And finally, what’s with all these companies looking to be Facebook killers? The social network is looking a bit vulnerable ahead of its rumored IPO next month. One local startup getting in on the action is Cambridge-based PowerInbox, which is trying to turn email into an interactive platform where you can access social media. Now if it could just get all of our inboxes down to a manageable size. …
 

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

 
READING, Mass. — This fall, Massachusetts voters will likely be asked to weigh in on the so-called Death with Dignity Act, which would allow terminally ill patients to take their own lives. As debate over the proposal heats up, one Reading woman has a unique perspective. Heather Clish’s father was treated for cancer in Massachusetts but died in Oregon, where he ended his life using a similar law. Clish shared her family's story with Greater Boston.

Realizing something was wrong
 
Lee and Mary Lou Johnson were on their way from Oregon to Europe for a cruise down the Danube when they stopped in Boston to visit their daughter and her family. Right away, Clish knew that her father wasn’t well. He seemed foggy; he would try to sit in a chair and miss the seat; he would walk upstairs when he meant to walk down.
 
"So something was telling us, this is very wrong," she said.
 
Johnson went to the emergency room at Mass General where he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, reportedly the same kind of cancer that killed Ted Kennedy. Johnson’s prognosis may have been even worse: the cancer had crossed both hemispheres of the brain, and doctors said it was inoperable.
 
So Johnson was treated with radiation and chemotherapy — but he was already planning his next move.
 
"We were in the hospital when he first did say, 'We’ve got to get to back to Oregon so I have access to this Oregon option,'” Clish said.

The opportunity for an assisted exit
 
The “Oregon option” is an act that allows adults who’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness to obtain medication they can use to end their life. Johnson returned to Oregon in late December.
 
"He knew he wanted to go about dying with grace. How would he treat people, how would he spend his time," Clish said. "And interwoven with all of that was … trying to figure out for himself, what was that line? What was living and dying with dignity?"
 
When her father’s condition worsened Clish flew out to be with him. The next day, he announced he was ready to die.
 
"I had just given him a drink of water," she recalled. "He took the drink of water, he lay back, and he said, 'Okay, I’m ready to go.' I said, 'Dad, no, that wasn’t that drink.' And he said, 'Well, it’s time to get that drink.'”
 
Clish didn't want the burden of interpreting his request. She asked what he meant, "and he told me clearly that was ready to take the mix, take the drugs."
 
The plan, and what happened

After triple-checking Johnson's intentions, the family contacted the end-of-life group Compassion & Choices. A volunteer came to the house and prepared a lethal dose of the drug Seconal while Johnson and his family said goodbye.
 
"We sat in the den where the bed was and we just talked. It was actually strangely nice," Clish said. Johnson talked about where he was from, in Utah — even some stories the family had never known. "He was funny even at the end. His last thing that he wanted to eat was a piece of toast with raspberry jam, because he loved raspberry jam, and he just completely enjoyed it."
 
A few minutes later, Johnson reached for the cup. He drank the contents down.
 
"It was very fast. I would say within minutes he appeared to have fallen asleep," Clish said. In fact, he had slipped into a coma, where he remained for about 10 or 15 minutes until his pulse stopped.
 
"The volunteer was very discreet," Clish added. "She was in another room, and she was the one who came, checked [his] pulse and told us when he had gone. It was very peaceful."
 
Critics argue that for the terminally ill, hospice care is enough. Clish admitted that end-of-life suicide isn’t right for everybody. "But for someone like my dad, it was right," she said. "When he died, my mom was in his arms…. He one hope was that when he died he would know who she was and that she loved him. So it was planned — it was planned and it worked out that way."
 
> > READ: The proposed Massachusetts initiative (pdf)
 
> > READ: A summary of the petition from the Attorney General's office (pdf)

 
BOSTON — There is evidence that Massachusetts residents support legalizing marijuana for medical uses. At a public hearing on April 10, lawmakers considered a proposed ballot initiative on the issue. But Beacon Hill is lukewarm on the idea.
 
Eric McCoy of Boston said that smoking marijuana alleviates pain from his multiple sclerosis. “The only reason I’m able to function every day, basically, is because of medical marijuana," he said. "Otherwise I would be probably stiff as a board laying on a bed somewhere, totally nonfunctional, because muscle spasms would take over."
 
The proposed ballot question would allow seriously ill patients with conditions such as cancer, AIDS and MS to get permission from their doctors to use marijuana. The state would register up to 35 nonprofit dispensaries to sell the drug.
 
Bay State residents have demonstrated support for the move. In 2010, advocates placed non-binding questions on local ballots in 18 communities, proposing to lift restrictions on marijuana use. Voters responded to the questions with a resounding "yes." Support ranged from 54 percent in some districts to up to 70 percent in others.
 
But at the hearing, lawmakers voiced some skepticism. Jeffrey Sanchez, public health committee co-chairman, noted that distributing and selling pot remains a federal crime. 
 
“We’re going pass a law that’s in direct violation of a federal law? I don’t understand how Massachusetts puts in jeopardy citizens on a day to day basis," he said. The U.S. Justice Department has said it wouldn't prosecute sick people, but it would go after dispensaries, even in states where medical marijuana is legal.
 
If the state legislature does not approve its own medical marijuana measure, advocates will need to gather some 11,000 signatures to secure its place on the November ballot. It’s widely expected that they could clear that hurdle. 
 

 
BOSTON — Massachusetts residents do a better job than residents of most states when it comes to taking medications as prescribed, but there's still room for improvement. That's according to new studies released Tuesday by CVS Caremark, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University.
 
Tom Hubbard of the Cambridge-based health policy think tank NEHI said people who don’t follow their prescriptions get sicker, end up in the emergency room and rack up big medical bills.
 
“If people don’t take their medications as prescribed, they’re not only not getting better but it’s a tremendous source of sort of futile effort in the health care system and wasted money,” he said.
 
Nationwide nearly half the people who are taking a drug to treat a chronic condition like high blood pressure or high cholesterol will stop taking their medication within the first year. In Massachusetts, about one-third of such people trail off.
 
Hubbard's heard many excuses, ranging from "the pills are too expensive" to "I feel better so I can stop taking them." He said there’s not one clear solution for improving medication compliance rates. But Massachusetts might have scored better than other states because drugs are more affordable here, he said: "We’re better covered in Massachusetts than almost anyplace else in the country. More people have health insurance."
 
According to the study, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation when it came to use of cheaper generic drugs to treat diabetes, depression, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
 
But the study also found that Massachusetts ranks near the bottom of states whose residents take advantage of mail-order prescriptions, coming in 44th. Research shows that if people don’t have to make repeated trips to the drugstore for refills, they’re more likely to stay on their medications. The study suggests that doctors, insurers, pharmacists and lawmakers find ways to encourage more patients to use mail-order prescriptions.
 

 
> > See other stories in WGBH News Focus: Health Care on Trial

BOSTON — Today, the Supreme Court enters its third day of historic arguments over President Barack Obama’s new health care law. A much-championed part of that law requires insurers to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. That’s good news for people with heart failure who need a heart transplant to survive — like Jeffrey Mascena, who was part of research at Massachusetts General Hospital that's aiming to make a patient's damaged, diseased heart new again.
 
Mascena sat in flannel pajama pants and a blue T-shirt as his cardiologist, Dr. Kimberly Parks, walked into his hospital room at MGH.

Mascena has spent more than one New Year's Eve in the hospital.

She took Mascena's hand. “So the big day is coming — the big day is discharge day,” she said.

It’s news Mascena had been waiting to hear for years: a one-way ticket out of the hospital.

A new heart on Valentine's Day
 
Once an avid biker and motorcyclist, Mascena couldn’t even walk his rescue dog Sean two months ago. Heart failure had kept him in and out of the hospital for years — sometimes for months at a time.
 
“Every Christmas, every New Year’s for the past 5 years or so, I’ve been in the hospital. What’s that do to the rest of your life?” Mascena said.  
 
Nothing seemed to help him — not a pacemaker, not a heart sensor. So when Mascena landed back in the hospital last December, Parks told him there was only one option left.

The skeleton of a heart. See larger photo. (MGH)

“We realized that Jeff was not going to survive for more than several months unless we did something drastic. And at that point, we decided he needed a heart transplant,” she said.
 
Mascena received a new heart on Valentine’s Day. He’s one of roughly 57,000 Americans who’ve received a heart transplant in the last 45 years. The surgery is nothing new, but what’s happening to his heart now, after surgery, is. Doctors are trying to regrow a new, healthy heart from Mascena's diseased, damaged one.

The skeleton of a heart

Here’s how it works.
 
Since Mascena's heart was ex-planted back in February, it's been sitting in a white Tupperware-like machine in an MGH lab. The machine makes a soft, pumping noise as it gently strips away the heart’s cells until all that remains is a ghostly, translucent heart skeleton. Once the skeleton is created, it will be injected with Mascena's stem cells. Doctors hope those stem cells will populate the heart skeleton, creating a new heart.
 
“There’s potential in the future that if we were able to reconstruct an individual’s heart, they could be placed on a total artificial heart for a period of time while they’re waiting for their new heart to be regrown,” said Parks.  
 
It would mean no more waiting for months on a donor list. Your own heart could be refurbished, then re-implanted. Parks said that’s still a long way off, but important benchmarks have already been met on the road to getting there.
 
Dr. Harold Ott is one of the lead researchers on the project at MGH. He’s already refurbished a rat heart.
 
“We were able to generate little hearts that performed a little heart function right now — not enough pump function to replace the existing heart but it’s a first step in the right direction,” said Ott.

Mascena and his dog.

The need for new hearts

Ott said if he can get it to work in humans, it would be a game-changer in organ transplantation. Right now, 100,000 Americans are eligible for a heart transplant, but just a little over 2 percent, or 2,300 people, will get one this year.
 
“That’s what we’re trying to tackle,” said Ott. “Instead of providing these patients with a donor organ from a different person, we try to regrow organs on demand. We could go take a biopsy, go to the lab and try to regenerate new heart muscle that could be implanted similar to a donor organ.”
 
Ott said it wouldn’t stop there. This process of washing and regrowing has the potential of working on other commonly transplanted organs too.
 
“So we try to apply this technology to develop lungs, hearts, kidneys, and livers and pancreas in order to face end-organ failure,” said Ott.
 
As for Mascena, he’s back home now for the first time in three months, slowly getting back into a normal routine. He said his small donation to Ott’s research is his own simple way of paying it forward: “I really hope to make it worthwhile for somebody at some point.”
 

 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Could your child leave his next checkup with a prescription for a video game? Akili Interactive Labs, founded by Boston’s PureTech Ventures, is hoping its game — designed to treat ADHD, autism and the like — will be the first one approved by the Food and Drug Association as a medical device. Akili was co-founded by San Francisco-based neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley. It’s unclear at this point how the game will work, but Akili is betting it can improve cognition by tapping into the brain’s capacity to overcome interruptions through practice. That’s more than Angry Birds can say. 

In other innovation news …
 
Burlington-based Demandware is the latest local tech company to go public, joining the ranks of TripAdvisor, Brightcove and Carbonite. The e-commerce software firm raised $88 million in its IPO and is valued at around half a billion dollars.
 
Not to be outdone, Lowell-based semiconductor firm M/A-COM Technology (pronounced "May-com") has also gone public this week, raising over $100 million in its offering.
 
And our quote of the week comes from Ted Morgan, CEO of Boston-based Skyhook, who offered this advice for companies building mobile software, platforms and apps: “Google and Apple want to own the whole stack. It’s hard for startups, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

p.s. Dr. Mario, anyone?

The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

BOSTON — Lawmakers held a public hearing on Tuesday on a bill that would allow Massachusetts to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana as it currently does liquor and tobacco. 

Rep. Ellen Story (D-Amherst), the sponsor of the bill, said the measure would benefit public health and the state’s pocketbook. 

“One [reason] is that this is in the interest of public health, so that if marijuana is regulated, you know what you are buying. And the other is the state needs more money. This would allow the state to benefit from the sale of marijuana by taxing it,” she said.

Her testimony earned some scattered applause from the packed hearing room.

But Kevin Sabet of the advocacy group the Massachusetts Prevention Alliance, said that marijuana is dangerous, especially for teens, and should not be legalized.

“Today’s marijuana is not your grandfather’s pot," he said. "This is the marijuana that is much more harmful. It’s grown purposefully to enhance the THC which creates the high in the drug and therefore we’re seeing increases in emergency room admissions, increases in mental health issues — especially schizophrenia, increases in driving accidents.”

Despite a huge public turnout in support of the bill, observers said the measure probably won’t pass. But there will likely be a separate ballot measure in the fall that will ask voters to legalize medical marijuana. In 2008, voters changed Massachusetts law so those caught with a small amount of marijuana face only a fine and not criminal charges.
 
> >  Read the bill.
 

Part 2: 

Gadgets can sometimes feel like a barrier to good health. You’re chained to your desk watching a screen, and you’re stressed by constant texts, tweets, and emails.

But if tech is sometimes the enemy, might it also be the answer?

We look today at some fascinating ways to get healthy, from a nutritionist in your pocket to a marathon coach on your mobile phone, to a website that rewards you for buying local, cutting fat and doing yoga.

Guests:

• Brian Stelter, media reporter, New York Times

• Laurent Adamowicz, Founder, Bon'App

• Sara Hopson, manager of Community Engagement, Daily Feats

• Sarah Hodges, head of marketing, Runkeeper