I WISH I MAY, I WISH I MIGHT . . .

`There is a place, a wonderful, magical, colorful place, where seriously ill children can go to have fun. . . . And there's a chance that, simply by having fun, they might actually get better."

That is the goal of the Starbright Pavilion Foundation, which is hoping to build such a place in Los Angeles in the next three to five years.

Wayne Shive, founder of Lifelines Corp., is on the board of directors of the Starbright Foundation. Movie director Steven Spielberg is its chairman.

Starbright is the sister organization of Starlight, which sponsors "Make a Wish" for seriously ill children.

Shive and others envision the Starbright Pavilion as a facility that combines entertainment, health care and research "in an attempt to bring the creativity and focus and the life that are the entertainment industry, and meld them completely with the health-care community," he said.

Such combinations have already been tested in Starlight Express rooms in several hospitals in California and Australia.

"In these rooms, they have taken a typical large hospital room and redone it like Disney would have done it," Shrive explained, with lots of colors and pictures of dragons and other fanciful animals.

"You don't sit down in a chair - you sit down on the back of an alligator or something," he added.

At the heart of these rooms are interactive computer systems and interactive video rooms.

Health benefits

What researchers are finding is that when kids are in a Starlight Express room, their pain tolerance goes up and their need for medication goes down, Shrive said.

"If you feel good about whatever situation you're in, you're gonna feel physically better, and you will heal faster," he added.

While some children could experience such treatment at the pavilion, many more would be reach via satellite at pediatric hospitals everywhere.

"The most important part of it will be that, through satellite communications, fiber optics, video, Federal Express, whatever, the message of what Starbright does will be . . . made available to all pediatric children's health-care organizations around the world," Shive said.

"We can build Starbright satellite rooms, like these Starlight Express rooms, in hospitals around the country and around the world, and they will be connected directly to the Starbright Pavilion in Los Angeles."

Making Barney real

One of the most exciting features of the pavilion is a form of technology called Factor.

"Factor is the capability of taking any image and making it real, interactive with the viewing person," Shive explained.

In Factor, an actor in a studio wears sensors taped to his face and body. These sensors are connected to a computer, which translates the image of the actor into another image, such as Barney the dinosaur.

Every time the actor moves or talks, the computer will have Barney doing the same thing. A television screen conveys the image to the child in another room who is undergoing rehabilitation processes.

Let's say that child is trying to learn the parallel bars. "At the end of the parallel bars is Barney. He's on the screen, and this child can talk to that Barney picture," Shive said.

"There is a microphone in the room and that microphone picks up the child's questions or the caregiver's questions, and the actor hears them. The actor can then act out and talk back and it comes out through Barney," he continued.

"We think if we do Factor and we put Barney at the end of these parallel bars, we'll be able to have this child do a range of motion exercise for a half hour instead of 15 minutes."

We'll have to wait to see how well Factor works. Shive said the foundation needs to raise $30 million to $45 million before the pavilion becomes a reality.

EDITED BY: Jess Inglis, 17