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Using Games to Improve Medicine
miller60 writes "At GameJournalism.com we look at Games for Health 2004, a conference which will explore the use of interactive games in treating patients and training doctors. One presentation discusses "Glucoboy," a Gameboy based diabetes monitoring solution, while another looks at the use of video games in improving surgical outcomes. The event is organized by the Serious Games Initiative, among others."
A game about diabetes monitoring? It's been done, and they shouldn't do it again any time soon.
How about the Cancer Game? It is Cancerific! Seriously though, games are becomming more integrated into many different areas people have not previously associated with video games. There has been a TON of stories recently about games being used for education and such. Is it really surprising though? Games are just a relatively new media afterall. From written text, to pictures, to movies every medium has found uses in a wide range of fields. Games are such a new medium they have not proliferated very far yet, but I don't find this idea any more surprising then movies being used.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
There are many skinny type 1 diabetics, including several Olympic athletes.
People involved in clinical research do all the normal "sciencey" things -- perform experiments, write papers for peer reviewed journals, and -- *yes* -- they do care why methods work. Yes, it's applied research, but physicists who are trying to design and build fusion reactors are still scientists too, no?
Practicing physicians on the other hand, while they may keep in touch with current research (perhaps skimming the New England Journal of Medicine or Lancet) aren't scientists in any real sense of the term, although they certainly use science in their work. It's a bit like the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer.