Games For Healthcare Research Articles

“Now we are going on a Journey”: Meaning-Making with a Healthcare Game during Toddlers’ Medical Treatment

ABSTRACTThis study explores how toddlers and caregivers make meaning with an interactive healthcare game on a tablet during medical treatment. The data material consists of video recordings of six nebuliser treatments of two children. Using a social semiotic perspective and a multimodal analysis, the study identifies how children and caregivers make meaning with the game, defined as a multimodal text, through creating text events. The findings illustrate how the participants’ meaning-making in the text events appears to have a narrative and an analytical orientation. It is suggested that the potential of healthcare games lies in the creation of text events where the game constitutes a shared focus. When children and caregivers share their meaning-making orientations, the medical treatment can be brought into the background.

Impact of organizations on healthcare-associated infections

Resolving the challenges presented by healthcare-associated infections requires a 'whole healthcare economy' perspective encompassing the interactions between biological, therapeutic, and structural factors. The importance and influence of organizational characteristics is receiving increasing attention. This article reviews some keys features that can facilitate the success of patient safety initiatives related to healthcare-associated infections, and highlights areas for further consideration and research. The impact of guidelines and indicators is discussed, together with some challenges resulting from the need to maintain and sustain clinicians' commitment to desired behaviour. Novel technology solutions such as electronic healthcare games and engagement with social media platforms may serve to support and reinforce traditional patient safety improvement initiatives. Recently published essential structural components and indicators of infection prevention and control programmes stress the need for comprehensive approaches that integrate multimodal and multidisciplinary solutions and strive to reinforce an organizational culture of patient safety.

Educational Game Development Approach to a Particular Case: The Donor's Evaluation

BackgroundSerious games are a current trend nowadays. Almost every sector has used serious games in recent years for different educational purposes. The eLearning research team of the Complutense University of Madrid main focus of research is the development of low-cost serious games. During the past 10 years, we have been working with and developing serious games, paying special attention to those related to healthcare. MethodsFrom all these studies, a methodology was defined—the Educational Game Development Approach (EGDA)—to design, develop, and evaluate game-like simulations or serious games in healthcare. We present the application of the EGDA to a particular case, the development of a serious game representing the donor's evaluation in an intensive care unit from the point of view of a hospital coordinator following the EGDA methodology. In this simulation, we changed the strategy of selection of teaching cases by exponentially increasing the number of teaching cases. ResultsThis kind of educational content provides several benefits to students as they learn while playing; they receive immediate feedback of mistakes and correct moves and an objective assessment. These simulations allow the students to practice in a risk-free environment. Moreover, the addition of game elements increases engagement and promotes the retention of important information. ConclusionsA game-like simulation has been developed through the use of this methodology. This simulation represents a complex medical procedure.

Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in Healthcare Education

We present EGDA, an educational game development approach focused on the teaching of procedural knowledge using a cost-effective approach. EGDA proposes four tasks: analysis, design, implementation, and quality assurance that are subdivided in a total of 12 subtasks. One of the benefits of EGDA is that anyone can apply it to develop a game since it keeps development as simple as possible and uses tools for modeling and implementation that do not require a highly technical profile. EGDA has been applied to the creation of seven educational games in healthcare, and has been iteratively refined after each experience. EGDA is evaluated on two aspects. First, the effort and cost needed for creating these games is estimated and compared to current industry standards. Second, impact on knowledge acquisition and a student acceptance are discussed. Results suggest that EGDA can make game development more affordable, which is critical for increased adoption and scalability of game-based learning (GBL), while assuring a high educational value of the resulting games.

Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications.

Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications.

체감형 헬스게임에서 사용자경험과 자기효능감이 게임 만족도와 성과에 미치는 영향

In order to predict satisfaction and performance of sensible healthcare game using motion recognition sensor, this study analyzed the effects of flow, presence and social cognitive factor and then, it attempted to verify structural relationships thereof. Self-efficacy, being a social cognitive factor, was found to affect the level of functional satisfaction of health game but it showed no direct effect to intention of using game. Flow experience was also observed to be a meaningful predictor for the level of functional and entertainment satisfaction in the direction hypothesized. It is also shown that presence exerts a direct effect on functional satisfaction. Finally, it is discovered that functional satisfaction has meaningful influence on entertainment satisfaction as well as future intention to use. The results verifies that even in sensible healthcare game, user experience and social cognitive factor have significant effects on satisfaction and performance of a serious game.

The design and implementation of architectural components for the integration of the IP multimedia subsystem and wireless sensor networks

The IP multimedia subsystem is becoming the de facto standard for IP-based multimedia services, while wireless sensor networks are gaining in popularity due to their ability to capture a rich set of contextual information. Integrating the sensing capabilities of WSNs in the IMS can open the door to a wide range of context-aware applications in areas such as wireless healthcare and pervasive gaming. We have previously proposed a presence-based architecture for WSN/IMS integration. This architecture relies on two key components: a WSN/IMS gateway acting as an interworking unit between WSNs and the IMS; and an extended presence server serving as a context information management node in the core network. In this article we focus on the design and implementation of these two components. Furthermore, two applications (a pervasive game and a personalized call control application) are used to concretely show how new applications can be developed using our architecture. Performance has also been evaluated. Several important findings were made in the course of this work; one is that the IMS integration with a large and evolving variety of WSNs may be a never-ending endeavor - the gateway requiring constant upgrading due to the lack of standard APIs for the interaction with sensors produced by different vendors. Another finding is that while the introduction of context as an application building block in the IMS ensures the availability of additional contextual information in the network and enables fast and easy development of context-aware applications, the lack of mature IMS application development toolkits remains a roadblock.

Games for Health Conference 2004: Issues, Trends, and Needs Unique to Games for Health

The first-ever Games for Health Conference (Madison, WI, September 16-17, 2004) identified issues, trends, and needs unique to games for healthcare. More than 130 doctors, educators, therapists, and game makers gathered to share experiences particular to the health industry, health practitioners, and patient treatment. Co-sponsored by Games for Health, Project of the Serious Games Initiative, the Academic ADL Co-Lab, and the Federation of American Scientists, the conference highlighted applications for direct patient care and therapy, as well as health education, policy, and management ideas. This paper presents key concepts from the conference's panel discussions and summarizes successful projects demonstrated at the conference that can serve as models for the field.

Pawns in the healthcare game

Pawns in the healthcare game

The practical impact of pharmacoeconomics - 3 perspectives

T here are several players in the healthcare game, all with quite different points of view. Patients want the best treatment available, governments want to use resources effectively and doctors are caught somewhere in between. The growing practice of pharmacoeconomics will, hopefully, help provide satisfactory solutions for all concerned. An insight into the contrasting perspectives at work was given at a recent conference organised by IBC Ltd and Adis International Ltd, entitled ‘Pharmacoeconomics: theory into practice’.