Info Technology + Healthcare + Gaming = DiaBetNet
Recently I was flipping through Revolutionary Wealth, a book about the trends giving birth to a new "Third Wave" of economics, and read about an interesting concept: a game that kids play on PDAs (e.g., Palm) to learn about their own body works and to better manage their chronic disease, in this case Type I diabetes.
The name of the game is DiaBetNet. The Roche webpage and a collaborator's webpage explain the who, what & why of the game. The project was headed by a pathology resident named Dr. Vikram Kumar, who was a medical student at the time and who studied computer engineering in college.
It turns out DiaBetNet was successful in getting young diabetics to more closely monitor their blood sugar throughout the day, which is key to managing diabetes and avoiding its ghastly complications. A NY Times article from November 2004 explains the challenge of getting kids to become vigilant about their disease.
Getting children with diabetes to prick themselves four times a day to check their blood sugar levels can be a challenge. But doctors have found that if they turn the chore into a game involving a personal digital assistant, young patients will do the checks more consistently.
That article also explains the design of the study conducted by the Joslin Center, one of the world's premiere diabetes treatment & research centers, to test the game's effectivness.
So the researchers divided 40 young patients into two groups and gave them all hand-held computers for keeping track of their blood sugar levels, their insulin use and their carbohydrate consumption. They were asked to monitor themselves four times a day.
For half of the children, however, the P.D.A.'s also contained game software tied to the monitoring and designed by one of the study authors, Dr. Vikram S. Kumar, when he was a medical student.
The children earned points when they played the game and more points if they accurately predicted their fourth blood sugar score of the day.
The study found that those children with the game software checked their sugar significantly more often over four weeks compared with those who did not have the game. At the end of that time, they also showed more knowledge about diabetes.
What were the results? According to the Joslin Center's press release:
The study found that 78 percent of the Game Group participants checked their blood glucose four or more times daily compared to only 68 percent of the Control Group participants. Game Group participants also had fewer episodes of hyperglycemia (elevated blood glucose), with 318 instances reported vs. 377 instances reported by Control Group participants. What’s more, surveys given to all participants before and after the study showed an increase in diabetes knowledge among all participants, with a significant increase in knowledge only among the Game Group participants. “We are encouraged by the results of this pilot study. It demonstrated the ease of introducing new technology to pediatric patients with diabetes, with an additional benefit of increased blood glucose monitoring among the Game Group participants,” Dr. Laffel said.
After showing that info technology + healthcare + gaming works in improving the management of this chronic disease among children, Kumar founded a company called Dimagi to spread the use of DiaBetNet and similar PDA programs that help individuals and communities take better care of themselves with cheap wireless technology. More on Kumar & his company on this World Changing webpage.
posted by Niraj "Raj" Patel @ 4/28/2006
1 comments
1 Comments:
In the NY Times article "Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time," the question posed is can games teach people something of value instead of being mindless fun? Those profiled in the article say yes.
“When they hear about Peacemaker, people sometimes go, ‘What? A computer game about the Middle East?’ ” admits Asi Burak, the Israeli-born graduate student who developed it with a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “But people get very engaged. They really try very hard to get a solution. Even after one hour or two hours, they’d come to me and say, you know, I know more about the conflict than when I’ve read newspapers for 10 years.”
...
And the games’ designers aren’t just selling a voyeuristic thrill. Games, they argue, can be more than just mindless fun, they can be a medium for change.
The proposition may strike some as dubious, but the “serious games” movement has some serious brain power behind it. It is a partnership between advocates and nonprofit groups that are searching for new ways to reach young people, and tech-savvy academics keen to explore video games’ educational potential.
Together they have found some seriously high-powered backers. Last year the MacArthur Foundation began issuing grants to develop persuasive games, including a $1.5 million joint gift to James Paul Gee, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, and GameLab, a New York firm that designs games. Meanwhile the United Nations has released Food Force, a game that helps people understand the difficulties of dispensing aid to war zones...
“What everyone’s realizing is that games are really good at illustrating complex situations,” said Suzanne Seggerman, one of the organizers of the conference. “And we have so many world conflicts that are at a standstill. Why not try something new? Especially where it concerns young people, you have to reach them on their own turf. You think you’ll get their attention reading a newspaper or watching a newscast? No way.”
Henry Jenkins, an M.I.T. professor who studies games and learning, said the medium has matured along with the young people who were raised on it. “The generation that grew up with Super Mario is entering the workplace, entering politics, so they see games as just another good tool to use to communicate,” he added. “If games are going to be a mature medium, they’re going to serve a variety of functions. It’s like with film. We think first of using it for entertainment, but then also for education and advertising and politics and all that stuff.”
So can these "serious games" be applied in healthcare? Absolutely. The DiaBetNet game profiled in this entry teaches kids to better understand their physiologiues and maintain their health in an engaging way thanks to game design and info technology.
Post a Comment
<< Home