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Organized to Promote and Support Serious Games for Healthcare

IGI Global Editors and Authors to Present and Attend Europe’s 2012 Games for Health Conference

By IGI Global on Nov 5, 2012
Games for HealthSylvester Arnab of Coventry University, UK, and editor of the IGI Global publication, "Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications," recently had the opportunity to attend Europe's 2012 Games for Health Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Contributing author for his book, Pamela M. Kato of the University Medical Center Utrecht, in The Netherlands, was a featured speaker at the conference. Dr. Kato's chapter is entitled “The Role of the Researcher in Making Serious Games for Health.”

Held November 5th and 6th, the Games for Health Conference was established in 2004 to support community, knowledge, and business developments in games and game technologies applied to health and healthcare. Bringing together hundreds of researchers, medical professionals, and game developers to share information about the impact of game technology on healthcare and policies, the conference offers over 60 sessions presented by an international array of speakers giving insight to research and developments in their fields.

IGI Global held a brief interview with Dr. Arnab regarding his text and the conference.


IGI Global: How does the scope of this conference tie in with the ideas behind your publication?

Sylvester Arnab: Games for Health Europe 2012 is the second annual conference bringing together medical professionals, game designers, policy makers and researchers under one roof. The areas covered in this conference are in line with the key themes in the book: key trends in Serious Games for health, methodologies and established case studies. Dr Pamela Kato, the author of Chapter 10, who is also in the Games for Health Europe advisory board, presented at the event. Her presentations were closely related to the chapter that she wrote for the book. A game for Relationship and Sex Education called PR:EPARe featured at the conference is based on the intervention mapping described in Chapter 7.

IGI Global: What were the most interesting concepts of this conference?

SA: The conference featured emerging new technologies, especially the proliferation of mobile devices and Gamification methodologies. The conference covers topics ranging from the design and validation methods to the actual applications of serious gaming in areas such as mental health, rehab, and public health. This provides a good coverage of key elements that would influence the success of using games for health purposes. The exhibition was also a key feature of this conference, where you could test various technologies and applications within the healthcare domain.

IGI Global: Where do you see the future of Serious Gaming?

SA: Serious gaming initiatives are paving the way for gamification of health related services. What makes gamification so attractive towards addressing the issue of motivation and lack of participation in beneficial and prescribed activities is the fact that people generally enjoy actively participating and engaging with others through entertainment. It is in our human nature to interact and be entertained with playful applications, particularly when there are engaging game design elements employed. Gamification promotes the use of game elements and metaphors beyond traditional games to solve real life problems. Gamifying creates actionable steps to overcome personal challenges. When people engage in gamified activities, they understand that there’s a meaningful purpose beyond playing the game. Gamification takes advantage of game mechanics to deliver engaging applications, and make non game applications more entertaining and appealing. Enabling tools are changing and they create new opportunities, where the role of games is increasingly dominated by social networking, online game-playing and ubiquitous mobile platforms. Internet of things (IoT) is also a capability that is essential for tracking and monitoring of activities related to the gamification components.

IGI Global: Is there any message you would like to give to your readers as it pertains to the research?

SA: The book on Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications provide a useful overview of the trends in the field and the methodologies essential to the design, development and deployment of serious games in healthcare. The case studies included in the book provide insights into the best practices as well as the lesson learnt, which are beneficial to researchers, developers and policy makers who are keen to commission serious games to support health related services.

_______________________

Dr. Kato’s talk at the Games for Health Conference is entitled “From Pandemonium to Prototype: Turning Students on to Becoming Serious Games Entrepreneurs and Scholars.” This presentation discusses her experience in turning a group of young multimedia technology students who had never before heard of serious games, into a group of budding Serious Games for Health entrepreneurs and scholars. She will present rationale for the topics, gamification approaches that were used to increase motivation and enthusiasm, as well as lessons learned and future directions.

For more information on the 2012 Games for Health Conference, visit their website: http://www.gamesforhealtheurope.org/.

Dr. Kato talks about her presentation on her Wordpress blog, where this self-titled “Serious Games Visionary” addresses serious games issues and interest pieces, such as “Top 20 Game Based Learning Blogs” and “10 Tips for Finding a Developer to Make Your First Serious Game”. Visit her acclaimed blog at: http://pamkato.wordpress.com/.


Dr. Sylvester Arnab is a currently a Senior Researcher at the Serious Games Institute (SGI), Coventry University, UK. His publication, Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications was released with IGI Global in July 2012.

Dr. Pamela Kato is an internationally recognized expert on making games for health. As the founding President and CEO at HopeLab, she led the efforts to develop and do research on Re-Mission, a game shown to improve adherence to cancer treatment among young people with cancer in the most scientifically rigorously designed randomized trial on a video game to date. Dr. Kato wrote the chapter “The Role of the Researcher in Making Serious Games for Health.” For more details and to view a sample of this chapter, follow this link: https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/role-researcher-making-serious-games/67963.
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