Games for Health

[leunas]

The Serious Games Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications. To date the project has brought together researchers, medical professionals, and game developers to share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health care and policy.


www.gamesforhealth.org/index2.html

[leunas]

Play Two Videogames and Call Me In the Morning



Will there ever come a time that Videogames 101 would be a pre-med requirement? Imagine doctor-wannabes flunking FPS 101 and just barely passing RPG PE. Hospitals would have the latest games and arcade rooms would be included in the emergency room. Looks like it just might happen in this lifetime.

Game developers, medical workers, and government policymakers will be meeting in September at the Games for Health Project. The Objective? To organize and accelerate the adoption of computer games for a variety of challenges facing the world today. In short, find other ways of making games work for humanity.

One such game is Re-Mission. It's a third person shooter that has "Roxxi - a gutsy, fully armed nanobot that seeks out and destroys cancer cells throughout the human body." According to patients who played the game, they were more inclined to take their medicines and undergo therapy. Re-Mission's Developer, HopeLab is also planning on developing games that treat autism, depression, sickle cell anemia, and childhood obesity.

There are times in a gamer's life that the only exercise they'll ever have is when they get up from the couch to get more chips. That all changed when Dance Dance Revolution came along. Now you see gamers turn into cheerleader wannabes. There's a study underway in the US to determine whether DDR can help get children fit. So far, the students and faculty are liking it. Your Math teacher may flunk you, but you'll kick his butt in DDR!

With more and more next-gen console being revolutionary, even in terms of interaction, its relevance to the medical field could become more significant. Gamers in the future will have well-built arms, we guess. Will videogames ever be part of the first aid cabinet? We're hoping that it will.



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