Cloud-based games for health

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Recently, Serious Games (SG) -- games 'more than fun' [1], serving additional purposes beyond mere fun and entertainment -- became very popular, not only as fascinating application field for academia, but also as relevant economic factor for the prospering game industry and various 'serious' business domains. SG combine game technologies and concepts with further technologies and research disciplines and apply the respective technologies to a broad range of application fields, e.g. education, training and simulation or sports and health [2]. The key challenge of SG is to reconcile and balance true gaming experience and the fulfilment of the additional purpose, i.e. reaching the serious goal (e.g. learning and training effects in educational settings or a change in health-related behaviour in the field of Games for Health [3]).In the health(care) application domain, Games for Health (G4H) approaches provide excellent opportunities both for prevention and rehabilitation. Whereas the primary prevention is in the responsibility of individuals/private (and healthy) persons, secondary prevention is in charge of the healthcare system (practically: healthcare insurance companies). For the private sector, motivating factors and incentives are necessary to convince individuals to do sports, exercise and have a healthy lifestyle (may be change nutrition), finally in order to avoid obesity, cardio problems or other diseases. With respect to secondary prevention, healthcare insurance companies need some 'proof of concept' that game-based approaches do create the proposed (medical) effects. For that, comprehensive evaluation studies are necessary.Hereby, G4H approaches, systems and services are enhanced by social media, cloud and future internet technologies [4]: Social media technologies are used to share game experiences with friends or to find appropriate teammates in collaborative training scenarios [5]. Cloud and future internet technologies [6] serve as infrastructure for cloud-based gaming and seamless communication among users (players/patients) and their social peers (parents, friends) and doctors, therapists and other stakeholders in the healthcare arena.The Serious Gaming group at the Multimedia Communications Lab -- KOM (www.kom.tu-darmstadt.de/research-results/research-areas/multimedia-technologies-serious-games/overview/) at TU Darmstadt tackles these issues in a number of G4H projects in cooperation with further research partners, technology providers, game developers and domain experts (e.g. doctors and therapists in hospitals and elderly care houses): motivotion60+ funded by the German Ministery for Education and Science in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (www.motivotion.org) focuses on sound scientific game-based training programs (coordination and strength exercises for fall prevention). ErgoActive [7] serve as basis for strategic SG research at TU Darmstadt (www.serious-games.tu-darmstadt.de) focusing on technology-enhanced measurement of effects in personalised exergames [8]. SG4Health and Genius funded in the framework of Hessen ModellProjekte, financed with funds of LOEWE (state offensive for the development of scientific and economic excellence in the state of Hesse) build the basis for technology transfer. Whereas SG4Health concentrates on the development of a technology platform for personalised SG in the area of health, nutrition and sport, Genius is building the bridge between Serious Games and Social Media [9].The talk provides an overview, current trends and research challenges in Serious Games and will sketch future scenarios of Cloud-based Games for Health scenarios.