Games for Health

"Cutting-edge game industry talent and resources can aid health practices by creating innovative and often compelling methods for learning, healing, and informing people."
Ben Sawyer, Co-founder, Games for Health

And they're just plain fun. Here's a small sampling.

Games for Health was started in 2003 because, in the words of Ben Sawyer, "the interface to healthcare is broken. Information as displayed in healthcare is slow, lacks design and impact, is anti-patient and anti-engaging." Games are none of that.

With support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio and the Serious Games Initiative, Games for Health has built an international community that includes 10,000 of the best minds in game development, research, and medicine. Their goal: to use cutting-edge games and game technologies to improve health and the delivery of health care.

No longer confined to family rooms, games are being used in hospitals, gyms, and schools. They are empowering people with physical (NIH Grant, Parkinson's Games) and cognitive disabilities (Lumosity).

SuperBetter is a game that helps people recover from an illness and/or achieve a health goal. The game was created by Jane McGonigal, Creative Director of Social Chocolate, as she found herself struggling to recover from a severe concussion. McGonigal says that within a few weeks, she was feeling better and recovering faster than she'd thought possible. Based on her experience, she believed others could benefit, too.

Ben Sawyer's company, Digitalmill, is working with Yale School of Medicine to develop Play2Prevent™, a game to help youth at risk of HIV. Games are also being used to distract children who undergo frequent and painful medical procedures as well as to train health care providers in clinical skills. Free Dive and Pulse!!  by Breakaway Games are a few examples.

Many others, like Playnormous—which was developed with researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center, US Department of Agriculture and National Institutes of Health—are designed to teach children about health with an emphasis on exercise and nutrition.

Two of the nation's largest health benefits company Humana (Farmscape and the Horsepower Challenge) and Aetna (Mindbloom) have also developed games as have a number of pharmaceutical companies.

Mindbloom

While exergaming "has gotten the furthest, the fastest," as Paul Tarini, Senior Project Officer, 

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, points out, "...we are starting to see games that focus on your brain and games that improve your brain's health." He cites Dr. Martin Seligman's work in Positive Psychology (Positive emotion, Engagement/Flow, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment or PERMA) to improve emotional health and how it is beginning to become "gamified."

 Mobile Health Trends

With the increasing use of smart phones and the availability of GPS, accelerometers, and low-cost wireless sensors, mobile technologies for managing health are becoming increasingly popular. Mobile health gaming is projected to be a multi-billion dollar industry in the next few years.

One game that has been getting a lot of attention is Zamzee which was developed to encourage physical activity in young teens. Children wear a smart device to record how much they move. The more they move the more rewards they earn to go shopping, take on challenges, and compete with friends online.

Sensei Inc., a leader in mHealth, has developed a virtual coach that promotes healthy nutrition, fitness, weight control and better self management of diabetes. Sensei's CEO Dr. Robert Schwartzberg will present technology background for the NIH funded diabetes and prediabetes telehealth study at the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C. in December.

"How Good Are You? Just Ask the Shirt"

Then there's smart clothing...Under Armour® has developed E39, a shirt worn by athletes, that collects and tracks biometric data (heart rate, breathing, g-force, and body positioning) and transmits data to a computer or handheld device. The promise: "You look at it, you learn, you get better."

Health Games Research

In Playing for Real: Video Games and Stories for Health Related Behavior Change, a review of the literature on video games through 2006, Baranowski and colleagues found that most of the articles showed that games promoted health-related behavior change. The authors concluded that "research is needed on the optimal use of game-based stories, fantasy, interactivity, and behavior change technology in promoting health-related behavior change."

In recent years, the field has been moving steadily in that direction. Funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio, Health Games Research is a national program that provides scientific leadership and resources in the field (see Additional Resources below).

G4H: A Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal

Earlier this week, Games for Health: Research, Development, and Clinical Application was previewed at the first Games For Health Europe Conference in Amsterdam. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., plans to launch the first full issue of this bimonthly journal in February 2012.

In the meantime, you can download the preview issue, subscribe to the journal, and to a free trial of the Companion e-Newsletter G4H Industry Insider by clicking here.

Additional Resources

Games for Health: Innovations, Impacts and Issues. Presentation by Ben Sawyer available at http://www.connected-health.org/media/262821/sawyer%20games%20for%20health.pdf

Can Playing Digital Games Improve Our Health? Presentation by Debra Lieberman available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0aGpr54V_c

Health Games Research has an online searchable database that includes hundreds of research publications on a wide variety of topics and information about hundreds of health games, organizations, events and resources.

Mobile Health News covers the healthcare industry's adoption of mobile technology. It offers a combination of breaking news, exclusive interviews, live event coverage and industry commentary.