Saturday, January 15, 2005

Serious Games Initiative (Games for Health Project)

PORTLAND, Maine, Dec. 21 /PRNewswire/—The Serious Games Initiative, a joint effort between Digitalmill, Inc. and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, today announced that Digitalmill has received a two-year grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to support the Games for Health Project.

Games for Health is designed to promote best practices, community building, and research into how cutting-edge game design and development methodologies can aid in the creation of health tools that range from direct patient application, to personal health education, and workforce initiatives.

“Games are already playing a role in health care today,” said Ben Sawyer, president of Digitalmill, which will run day-to-day activities and planning for Games for Health. “We have exercise games, games that help with phobia treatment, games used for treating pain related to cancer or burns, and games used to train health care workers in important new procedures. We’re not starting at zero. We’ve already showcased more than a dozen projects, including commercial products that prove there is a potentially pervasive role for games and gamelike software in health care.”

Funding provided by RWJF will be used to continue the efforts already under way and to create new resources for assembling a comprehensive community to aid developers and users of games as solutions to a variety of health problems. Examples of these applications include the following:

-- Dance Dance Revolution: The popular dance game from Konami features an exercise mode. You set goals and play while it reports calorie burn from game sessions.
-- Iceworld and Splash: Gamelike 3D environments are now being used to help patients cope with severe pain resulting from burns and cancer treatment.
-- Yourself! Fitness: Designed to be the workout for the videogame generation. It provides dynamic personal workout sessions using state-of-the-art 3D game graphics and environments.
-- Code Orange: Helps hospitals deal with the rapid decision making required to deal effectively with mass-casualty events.
-- Cardiac Arrest: A computer adventure game that simulates the diagnosis and treatment procedures for people suffering from various forms of cardiac arrest.
-- VR Phobia: The Virtual Reality Medical Center has modified commercial games to create effective treatments for patients suffering from common phobias, including fear of flying, spiders, heights, and driving.

Full press release at:

http://www.gamesforhealth.org/
http://www.seriousgames.org/