"On May 29th, 11am-1pm PDT (2-4pm EDT), you'll have the chance to join leading experts in health and health care games-including game designer Jane McGonigal, Lygeia Ricciardi of Health and Human Services, and researchers from IFTF-in a live Webinar discussion to explore opportunities for using games to improve health outcomes."
Abstract: "Adolescent obesity is an increasing challenge, and
pervasive social health games hold much promise for promoting
sustained healthy behaviors.
Researchers and d
esigners of
these
systems
have many potential theories and existing best practices
at their disposal.
Our study, grounded in participatory design,
shows which ones matter
-
both for pervasive social health games
and within the cultural context of a community
we studied over
the course of three years.
We worked with 112 US middle school
students from a lower
-
income community in a series of
participatory design exercises focused on social rewards for
everyday physical activity.
In our analysis, we
discuss
design
implications in four key areas
: social presence, gender effects,
incentives and competition. We show how these themes
manifested in students' designs and why they
were
particularly
important to our participa
nts. We then use
our findings to
suggest
design strategies for youth
-
focused pervasive social health
games."
Abstract: "Obesity has become an outstanding public health issue in most
countries around the world. Many attempts have been made to address
this issue that ranges from taking medication to doing exercise to follow-
ing a diet plan to playing games. Few approaches combine exercise and
game to engage the obese people in playing fun-based games or pur-
poseful games, also known as serious games, while monitoring their bio-
signals. However, existing work hardly provides a configurable, scalable
and context-aware serious game framework that can be used as a sup-
port for obesity treatment. In this paper, we take an attempt to propose
such a framework. The proposed framework facilitates bio-signal monitor-
ing based on body sensor network, context-awareness based on perva-
sive sensors, and on-the-spot activity recommendation based on current
game-playing context. It uses the cloud computing platform as infrastruc-
tural support that ensures the scalability of the framework. In order to
demonstrate the suitability of the proposed framework, we developed a
sample serious game; deploy it over a cloud platform; and experiment
with it by capturing some psycho-physical data while the obese are en-
gaged in game-play. We observed that the obese people were very much
engaged in game-play and they had positive experience using the system"
Abstract: "Persuasive games are an effective approach for motivating health behavior, and recent years have seen an increase in games designed for changing human behaviors or attitudes. However, these games are limited in two major ways: first, they are not based on theories of what motivates healthy behavior change. This makes it difficult to evaluate why a persuasive approach works. Second, most persuasive games treat players as a monolithic group. As an attempt to resolve these weaknesses, we conducted a large-scale survey of 642 gamers' eating habits and their associated determinants of healthy behavior to understand how health behavior relates to gamer type. We developed seven different models of healthy eating behavior for the gamer types identified by BrainHex. We then explored the differences between the models and created two approaches for effective persuasive game design based on our results. The first is a one-size-fits-all approach that will motivate the majority of the population, while not demotivating any players. The second is a personalized approach that will best motivate a particular type of gamer. Finally, to make our approaches actionable in persuasive game design, we map common game mechanics to the determinants of healthy behavior."
Games for Health Salon by Gaming with a purpose On December 1, 2011 the Association ‘Gaming with a Purpose’ organized a Salon on ‘Games for Health’ in Vienna. Local experts explained and discussed Games for Health.(features videos and presentation slides)
"a casual
game that addresses childhood cancer: Besides mere entertainment, a health
game that focuses on cancer may serve as a clinical tool in order to teach
children about the particularities of the disease and initiate discussion among
cancer patients, their parents and medical staff. In this context, the results of an
empirical study revealed a generally high acceptance of the health game among
young patients, while parents and medical staff highlighted the educational
potential of health games addressing cancer. Additionally, we discuss the
challenges of evaluating digital games in a hospital setting which were revealed
during the evaluation phase."
"Driven by an initiative of the Adult & Paediatric Diabetes Psychology Service of New Zealand, research has been performed to develop new mechanisms, in the form of computer games, to educate children and teenagers about living with diabetes. Aimed at achieving maximum education effectiveness, the ultimate goal of our research is to develop innovative machine learning algorithms that can be used in games to improve their ability to learn about the changing needs of children and to incorporate this intelligence into the game interface. We also plan to collect and report on the information collected from testing our computer games within a small group of children who have been diagnosed with type I diabetics. "
Abstract: "In 2010, the authors (Jacobs, a game design professor, Sugarman, a pediatrician, and
Rice, a psychotherapist ) started meeting to brainstorm design and play concepts for a
therapeutic, physiologically-controlled videogame intended for use by people diagnosed with
anxiety and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The goal was to combine cognitive behavioral
therapy (CBT), narrative therapy (NT) and biofeedback supported psychophysiological selfregulation
(PSR) into a game that would engage adolescents and provide hard data on a player's
physical and emotional states during a therapy session. The game concept that emerged is
"MindGamersTM in School" (MG), a therapeutic game prototype being developed and tested
across two 6-month sessions by the authors and two teams of undergraduate game design and
development students at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Pursuing the design required half the team to learn principles, terms and methods of
strength-based, client-centered psychotherapy and their application to psychophysiological selfregulation
and biofeedback theory and practice. The other half of the team needed to engage in
understanding the current state of role-playing videogames, avatar creation systems and game
design/development processes.
This paper will describe the current game prototype and then focus on MG's design and
development process by looking at how the initial design period brought the game design to its
current state and how it has continued to influence the production process."
"Jane McGonigal's Super Better: A game for your health (video) The renowned game designer sits down with SmartPlanet's Sumi Das to talk about her new online social game, which debuts today and promises to help people build their personal resilience against health ailments."
"Strokes are a leading cause of death and disability and have been described as a "worldwide epidemic" [5]. Strokes cause disability, partial paralysis and leave up to 85% of their victims with some form of motor impairment. Stroke rehabilitation starts as soon as possible and involves repetitive movement which people find repetitive and boring. A study [1] has found that as few as 31% of people complete their exercises as recommended. Adding to this the high cost of one on one therapy and transport to see specialists, stroke rehabilitation is a major problem. Games have been trialed for stroke rehabilitation to increase patient motivation and reduce costs. This literature review aims to find out to what extent games have therapeutic value and further, what characteristics make a good game for stroke rehabilitation. We find that in order for a game to be successful it must be based on solid therapeutic principles as well as game design principles including "challenge" and "meaningful feedback". Different hardware and software can be used as long as it follows game design principles to encourage patients to perform therapeutic exercises. Games must also take into account the low morale of recent stroke victims and avoid discouraging beginners."
Health Games Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio (RWJF), has updated its online health games database-the only one of its kind-by adding advanced search features to enhance the user experience. These updates make the database more accessible to new audiences and easier to search through saved searches and new item alerts.
From the abstract: "Objective: We report the design of a trial to assess the educational efficacy of InsuOnline, a game for education of primary care physicians (PCPs). The goal of InsuOnline was to improve appropriate initiation and adjustment of insulin for the treatment of DM. InsuOnline was designed to be educationally adequate, self-motivating, and attractive.
Methods: A multidisciplinary team of endocrinologists, experts in medical education, and programmers, was assembled for the design and development of InsuOnline. Currently, we are conducting usability and playability tests, with PCPs and medical students playing the game on a desktop computer. Adjustments will be made based on these results. An unblinded randomized controlled trial with PCPs who work in the city of Londrina, Brazil, will be conducted to assess the educational validity of InsuOnline on the Web. In this trial, 64 PCPs will play InsuOnline, and 64 PCPs will undergo traditional instructional activities (lecture and group discussion). Knowledge on how to initiate and adjust insulin will be assessed by a Web-based multiple choice questionnaire, and attitudes regarding diabetes/insulin will be assessed by Diabetes Attitude Scale 3 at 3 time points-before, immediately after, and 6 months after the intervention. Subjects´ general impressions on the interventions will be assessed by a questionnaire. Software logs will be reviewed.
Results: To our knowledge, this is the first research with the aim of assessing the educational efficacy of a computer game for teaching PCPs about insulin therapy in DM. We describe the development criteria used for creating InsuOnline. Evaluation of the game using a randomized controlled trial design will be done in future studies.
Conclusions: We demonstrated that the design and development of a game for PCPs education on insulin is possible with a multidisciplinary team. InsuOnline can be an attractive option for large-scale continuous medical education to help imp
From the introduction: "we conduct two large
-
scale studies of
gamer's health behavior, their associated determinants, and the influence of various 2
[persuasive technology] PT strategies on various
gamers
'
personalities. The aim is to answer the following
research questions
:
Q1.
Is it possible that membe
rs of one gamer type will respond differently
to
various
persuasive
strategies and theoretical determinants
from
members of
other gamer
types
?
Q2.
Which persuasive strategies and theoretical determinants are suitable for
designing
persu
asion games
for various gamer
types?
Q3. Can persuasive strategies and theoretical determinants be mapped to common
game mechanics?
Q4. To what extent can we employ the one
-
size
-
fits
-
all approach and what persuasive
strategies
support
one
-
size
-
fits
-
all approach
?
"We have created a suite of physical computing activity games for Humana's Innovation Center office space - using web-connected sensors embedded in clothing, mobile devices, toys, exercise equipment, home and office accessories and appliances, and even buildings themselves. These challenges encourage people to be more physically active through social web-based games. Each experience is connected to the Humana employees' RFID badges, which allows them to participate in scheduled events, accrue points, and win top scores. A major component of every one of these games is the social platform behind them, which has been proven to be a major motivator in building and maintaining enthusiasm for healthy living. The ideas are developed through collaborative brainstorms, facilitated by Tellart and including Humana Innovation Center personnel. Tellart then refines the ideas, proposing and implementing several of them per round as medium-fidelity prototypes for the office."
Abstract: "Serious games
can help
to improve efficacy of
motor
rehabilitation
especially in a home environment. We introduce
"
The Sorcerer's Apprentice"
,
a serious game
improving strength
and mobility of the shoulder area
targeting
support
of
supervised
phy
siotherapy
.
It proposes a customizable
environment
for
supplementary exercises in the context of rehabilitation for
a
one
-
sided Shoulder
-
Impingement
-
Syndrome.
We
introduce
the
medical background of the shoulder impingement syndrome,
how the game aims to im
prove the health status of the patients
through
several options of
exercises and how these exercises are
embedded into the flow of game play. We will further explain
how motivational factors are implemented and which additional
factors were relevant in the
design
process. As the game makes
use of motion tracking for input, we utilized
Microsoft Kinect as
a low
-
cost IO
device suitable for a
home
-
environment use case. "
"a national program that provides scientific leadership and resources to advance the research, design and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies that promote health. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio and headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara"
Report from the Canadian Association of Information Science meeting focusing on game research. Features audio and slides for the presentation "Gaming Works: Mental Health and Wellness in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games" by Diane Rasmussen Neal and Caroline Whippey (scroll down page for presentation)