Bwin-Harvard problem gambling research collaboration extends for next 5 years

Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG has extended its cooperation with Division of Addictions at the Cambride Health alliance and announced a five-year contract to carry on researching online gaming, with the motive to identify and prevent gaming-related troubles and thus offering a secure online gaming platform. Bwin is an Austrian-based online company.

For the past three years, The Division on Addictions at the Cambridge Health Alliance which is a Harvard Medical School Teaching Affiliate has been in collaboration with Bwin. Mutually, they have offered a number of dependable gaming initiatives while providing tools and information intended to push accountable gaming. The latest agreement thereby states an advance extension of a partnership that has already fetched decent results proved to be quite historic in its scope.
The collaboration has also produced many scientific studies evaluating the data of over 47,000 Bwin customers' activities for 36-month period.

"Through its relationship with the Division on Addictions," Dr. Howard Shaffer, Director of the Division on Addictions, "Bwin has supported numerous scientific inquiries, including the first ever scientific longitudinal study of actual internet gaming behavior." Shaffer, also praised Bwin for encompassing "integrated responsible gaming efforts into its business practices and made empirically-supported self-help resources available to its subscribers."

Manfred Bodner, co-CEO of Bwin, on focusing the realistic benefits of the research, says, “the need to understand what goes on in consumers' minds and be able to answer fundamental questions about online gaming are based on scientific evidence -- and not based on speculation." Bonder further adds, “the idea is ultimately to be "capable of identifying risk patterns associated with disordered gambling so that we can prevent them."