Slideshare Archive Started for Conference

We've begun getting speakers to post their presentations using Slideshare. As they do please visit the event site on Slideshare to see them:

http://www.slideshare.net/event/games-for-health-2008

VIDEO/ONLINE GAMES FOR HEALTH COME OF AGE: FOUR MAJOR TRENDS NOW EMERGING

Streaming audio from today's telenews conference: http://www.hastingsgroupmedia.com/GolinHarris/050808GamesforHealth.wma

VIDEO/ONLINE GAMES FOR HEALTH COME OF AGE: FOUR MAJOR TRENDS NOW EMERGING

Emerging Developments Outlined As Games for Health Conference Gets Underway; Health-Oriented Innovations - Such as Guitar Hero Modified for Arm Amputee Rehab - Gaining Ground.

BALTIMORE, MD. & WASHINGTON, D.C.///May 8, 2008///Four major emerging trends -- exergaming kicks into high gear, video games go to rehab and therapy, major health care providers arrive on the scene, and the rise of video games for first responders and medical professionals - were highlighted today during a telenews event conducted by organizers of the Games for Health national conference (http://www.gamesforhealth.org) taking place May 8-9, 2008 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Drawing on 60 planned presentations by 75 speakers, Games for Health conference highlights trends including:

* Video games go to rehab and therapy. In a Games for Health conference highlight, a version of the popular video game Guitar Hero will be unveiled that is designed to aid arm amputee rehabilitation ... Red Hill Studios will present its findings about the use of PDWii to aid balance and mobility in Parkinson's patients. PDwii is currently being developed by Red Hill Studios and the UCSF School of Nursing, with funding by the NIH. Quantifiable results are being used to track patient progress and are being integrated into the patient's overall regime. Results will be used to benefit further innovations in the field of games for health . . . For younger patients, there is Ditto, a multi-modal distraction device designed to control pain and stress among patients undergoing burn and orthopedic medical procedures.

* Exergaming kicks into high gear. One Games For Health panel will explore how exergaming in gyms and other settings can be used to combine physical activity and fun. Another presentation will focus on "Zyked" - a set of online and mobile services designed to be for working out what Xbox Live! is for videogames. Zyked's creator Tom Soderlund will present the basics behind Zyked and report on how the first batch of user tests are going. Soderlund will also present how Zyked intends to work with a multitude of portable devices including digital music players, digital athletic gear and mobile phone platforms. Dr. Alasdair Thin of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, will outline in "Go for the Burn: Designing Body-Movement Controlled Video Games to Maximise Energy Expenditure" his thoughts about how to future exergame design should work to ensure maximum health benefits.

* Major health care providers arrive on the scene. For the first time ever, a major U.S. health care insurance company, Humana, is a primary sponsor of the Games for Health conference. The sponsorship reflects the medical community's increasing interest in the potential of games. Representatives from several of the largest health insurance plan providers in the United States will convene in a plenary session at the conference to detail the game-related efforts they've launched to date and their view about what is needed for the future to use games and games technology to solve critical problems in health they and others are facing . . . Another new development: the K.I.C.K. (Kid's Interactive Creation Kiosk) is a touch screen system and software activity package developed with young children in mind. Initial design of the system was focused on hospital waiting rooms and other similar healthcare settings. Developed by a team of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center the project was originally titled "Project ER" and aimed to lower stress for 60,000 children who visited Pittsburgh Medical Centers ER each year. During the test run the project gathered considerable research on how to deploy such systems in healthcare settings and will share this knowledge during a case presentation of the K.I.C.K. system. In order to see games for health play a greater role in settings where healthcare is delivered, significant hardware and software delivery problems need to be solved.

* The rise of games for first responders and medical professionals. Conference attendees will have an opportunity to play with 3DiTeams. Funded by the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), 3DiTeams was developed by Virtual Heroes with Duke University's Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, and lets people interact with a fully 3D simulation of emergency health care environments ... Medical Cyberworlds is a startup in the process of creating an online multiplayer game to train doctors to communicate more effectively with their patients. Dr. Fred Kron, the founder and CEO of the company and Noah Falstein, the lead designer will present an update at the conference on the state of the project and discuss the challenging process of encouraging effective collaboration between physicians, academics, and game developers.

Other conference highlights include a presentation by Nina Fefferman of Tufts University about the "Corrupted Blood Syndrome" content of the popular World of Warcraft online game. In September 2005 designers and programmers at Blizzard Entertainment created new game content for Blizzard's mega-hit massive multiplayer online game World of Warcraft that inadvertently unleashed an in-game epidemic. Later called the Corrupted Blood Disease, this virtual virus event was well covered in game and technical press but little else about this event and what insights it might offer to epidemiologists has been presented. Fefferman will present her work looking into the Corrupted Blood Disease as an epidemiological event. The talk will cover what knowledge of the event exists outside of Blizzard, developer of World of Warcraft, and based on interviews with Blizzard staff. While this is not the first game-based epidemiological event in a game or virtual world the Corrupted Blood Disease event is one of the most famous and interesting to date and provides an outline of the roles games can play in improving our understanding and possible responses to such events in the future.

ABOUT GAMES FOR HEALTH

Founded in 2004, the Games for Health Project supports community, knowledge and business development efforts to use cutting-edge games and game technologies to improve health and health care. The Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the lead conference sponsor and a major supporter of the Games for Health Project. Over three days, more than 300 attendees will participate in over 60 sessions provided by an international array of 75 speakers, cutting across a wide range of activities in health and health care. Topics include exergaming, physical therapy, disease management, health behavior change, biofeedback, epidemiology, training, cognitive exercise, nutrition and health education. This year's conference includes presentations by Dr. Richard Satava; Starlight Foundation; HopeLab; Realtime Associates; Virtual Heroes; XRtainment Zone; Archimage; Dr. Mark Baldwin of MindHabits; Electric Owl Studios; Noah Falstein of The Inspiracy; and Games for Health co-founder Ben Sawyer.

The Games for Health Project is produced by the Serious Games Initiative, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars effort that applies cutting-edge games and game technologies to a range of public and private policy, leadership and management issues. The project also produces the Games for Health Conference, now in its fourth year. The Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications. To date, the project has brought together researchers, medical professionals and game developers to share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health, health care and policy. For more information, visit www.gamesforhealth.org.

CONTACT: Ailis Aaron Wolf, (703) 276-3265 or aawolf@hastingsgroup.com; and Elly Spinweber, (703) 741-7513, espinweber@golinharris.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A streaming audio replay of the Games for Health telenews event held today will be available on the Web at http://www.gamesforhealth.org as of 6 p.m. EDT.

Games for Health Press Release: Presents Content for Fourth Annual Conference

Games for Health Presents Content for Fourth Annual Conference

Baltimore Convention center : May 7-9, 2008

April 22, 2008 - (Portland, Maine) – The Games for Health Project (www.gamesforhealth.org) today announced its agenda for the fourth annual Games for Health Conference. The conference will be held May 8 to 9, 2008, at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Md. Pre-conference workshops on May 7 provide day-long events devoted to virtual worlds and health, as well as games accessibility. Together, the meetings will cover the intersection of next-generation game technologies, health and health care.

Registration for both the conference and the pre-conference workshops is still open and program materials are now available on the Games for Health Web site at: www.gamesforhealth.org

Pre-Conference Workshop Schedule : Games Accessibility Day

Games Accessibility Day @ Games for Health

On May 7 at the Baltimore Hyatt Inner Harbor the Games for Health Project will host a pre-conference workshop on accessibility for games. The agenda for this great event is now complete. Tickets to the event itself are only $129.00 if you register only for the workshop and $99.00 if you register also for Games for Health. Tickets to the Games for Health Conference which follows on May 8-9 are $495.00.

Tickets to each event may be purchased directly at: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=146432

Click through for schedule...

Pre-Conference Workshop Schedule (Virtual Worlds & Health)

Virtual Worlds & Health Day @ Games for Health

On May 7 at the Baltimore Hyatt Inner Harbor the Games for Health Project will host a pre-conference workshop on virtual worlds & health. The agenda for this great event is now complete. Tickets to the event itself are only $129.00 if you register only for the workshop and $99.00 if you register also for Games for Health. Tickets to the Games for Health Conference which follows on May 8-9 are $495.00.

Tickets to each event may be purchased directly at: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=146432

Click through for the schedule...

Sessions at Games for Health 2008

We're are nearly final with our expected program for Games for Health 2008 on May 8-9 in Baltimore.

Please click through to see many of our exciting sessions!

We're planning close to 40 sessions including sessions on epidemiology in World of Warcraft, Game Addicition, Nurse Training, Rehabitainment, and a special session with some of the biggest companies in healthcare.

Our final program will add about 18 more sessions currently being summarized to be announced later next week.

RWJF Invests $8.25M into research program covering games and healthcare

$8.25 Million Research Program to Investigate Design Strategies and
Benefits of Interactive Games to Improve Health and Health Care

Efforts Intensify to Strengthen Growing Field, Call for Proposals Announced

(Princeton, NJ, November 12, 2007) The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today launched Health Games Research, a new national program to support research to enhance the quality and effectiveness of interactive games that are used to improve health. The $8.25 million grant builds on RWJF’s ongoing work to understand the potential for games to improve health and health care, and to forge connections between the games and health fields. Health Games Research will be located at the University of California, Santa Barbara and directed by Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., communication researcher in the university’s Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research.

This grant represents a significant new investment to advance the health-related impact of games by RWJF’s Pioneer Portfolio, which supports innovative projects that may lead to breakthrough improvements in the future of health and health care. In 2005, the Pioneer Portfolio made an initial grant to the Games for Health Project, whose work to connect game industry leaders with scholars and health experts heightened interest in the potential for this field to positively influence health. Research has shown that games can help increase players’ physical activity levels, reinforce anti-smoking attitudes or improve young cancer patients’ adherence to their treatment plans. They also provide simulation environments that health care professionals use to hone their skills, and help policy-makers and public health leaders plan for natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. Growth in this field has underscored the need for more research to understand how games and game technologies can be designed to benefit people’s health and health care.

Click through for more...

HopeLab starts Ruckus Nation

Our friends at HopeLab have started a new contest and while it's not 100% about video games entries can certainly be about games and the entire contest is inspired in part by programs like Generation Fit that get kids moving and exercising in new ways. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is also a sponsor.

Congrats to HopeLab and good luck to all entrants!

HopeLab is looking for product ideas that will get kids moving!

Ruckus Nation is an online competition that challenges people to imagine innovative products that will increase physical activity among kids ages 11 to 14. We are inviting you to participate as a contestant or judge and to help us spread the word.

People of all ages can enter their ideas to Ruckus Nation and win — win the opportunity to help kids, win recognition for their idea, and win cash prizes. HopeLab will support the development, testing and distribution of products based on the best ideas, and more than $300,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded to winning entries!

Sign up now at www.ruckusnation.com/info for email updates on the competition. Entries due by November 20! Click through for more details!
http://www.ruckusnation.com/pdf/RN_Flyer.pdf

Winners of our Competition Announced!

See our competition site for complete details of the winners from the first annual Games for Health competition!

Games for Health Day Seattle, WA -- August 23, 2007

On August 23, the eve of Penny Arcade Expo the Games for Health Project is hosting a day long West Coast Meetup devoted to games and healthcare.

Games for Health Day Seattle is designed to provide a unique overview and introduction to this fast emerging approach to health communications, training, and therapy. This event features hands on demos of game projects aimed at health and healthcare and an array of interesting sessions.

This event is free to the first 50 participants who RSVP to rsvp@seriousgames.org. Thereafter attendance is $99.00 a person.

Games for Health Day Seattle runs from 9am-7pm including a networking reception and is located at the Hotel Deca (4507 Brooklyn Avenue, NE).

Games for Health Day is organized by the Games for Health Project (www.gamesforhealth.org) which is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Click through for the complete current schedule!