P. M. Kato Consulting, LLC is led by Pamela M. Kato, Ed.M., Ph.D., an internationally recognized expert on serious games for health.
As the Director of P. M. Kato Consulting, LLC based in Silicon Valley, Dr. Kato works with international companies, government agencies and NGOs to make serious games for health with impact.
GAMES: Her large portfolio features games for cancer, patient safety, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, mental health, and hemophilia. She is currently hard at work on making games for maternal health in sub-Saharan Africa.
CLIENTS: Clients include Pfizer (UK), Healthy Solutions (Netherlands), Sanofi (France), Janssen (Belgium), the Ministry of Health Holdings (Singapore), HopeLab (USA), Halmstad University (Sweden) and Grendel Games (The Netherlands).
RECOGNITION: Her games have been accredited by a nursing association, licensed to a medical device company, exhibited in a museum, and won top awards from the Serious Play Conference, I/ITSEC, PM Society, Fun and Serious Game Festival, Dutch Game Awards, and Brera Design Days.
MEDIA ATTENTION: Dr. Kato’s pioneering work has been covered in outlets such as MobiHealth News, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, The Washington Post, New Scientist, and Reuters.
RESEARCH: Dr. Kato has widely cited research publications in high impact peer-reviewed journals. She is an Associate Editor for the Games for Health Journal and was a Guest Editor for the Journal of Applied Testing Technology.
INNOVATION: Dr. Kato began working on games for health when she co-founded HopeLab in 2000. As the President and CEO of HopeLab, she led the design, development and research on the original Re-Mission, a widely acclaimed game (with over 250,000 copies distributed worldwide) for young people with cancer. Re-Mission was evaluated in a multi-center randomized trial published in Pediatrics. The trial showed that Re-Mission increased cancer treatment adherence among patients who played the game. Re-Mission’s success as an innovative, high-impact solution led to HopeLab’s recognition by President Obama as non-profit that is making a difference in communities across the U.S. Today, HopeLab continues to be inspired by the original mission of combining research and technology innovation to improve the health of young people.
ACADEMICS: Dr. Kato was Professor of Serious Games at Coventry University where she led the Serious Games Institute (SGI) in their efforts to develop and conduct research on gamified sensor based platforms for health, education, and energy efficiency as well as a non-digital board game solution for patient empowerment.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Dr. Kato has given keynotes and invited talks on games for health at conferences such as the TEDx, Wharton People Analytics Conference, ACM SIGDOC, SEGAMED, Games for Health Europe, Games for Health UK, Games for Change Africa, International Conference on Communication in Healthcare, ASPiH, SESAM, International Forum for Quality and Safety in Healthcare, The Royal Society of Medicine, Digital Health Live Dubai, and NASA.
EDUCATION: Dr. Kato received her masters in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Recent Talks
In November 2021, Dr. Kato gave a Keynote for the International Serious Games Symposium in Tehran, Iran. It was entitled, Secrets to making successful serious games: Living on the edge.
September 9, 2020, P. M. Kato spoke on a KIDS 2.0 – ENGAGEMENT AND BEHAVIOUR CHANGE panel at a HIMSS Health 2.0 Conference in Helsinki, Finland. Coverage of the panel’s approach appeared in a Healthcare IT News article and in a MobiHealth News article on children and mental health.
On September 8, 2020, I gave a talk on serious games in medical education with a panel of esteemed colleagues at AMEE 2020: The Virtual Conference. AMEE is the Association for Medical Education in Europe.
2016: How Artful Games Can Help Treat Patients
According to Pam Kato, games hold the promise of inspiring interaction with users; Pam details how games can be more involving and meaningful to some than real life especially among patients. Her talk moves further to explain how serious games can help in end-of-life planning.