Games for Health, Boston

Last week GEElab Director, Dr Steffen P Walz spoke at the 10th Games for Health conference in Boston. Games for Health explores the intersection of videogames and health and is attended by leading professionals from the health sector. Dr Walz spoke as part of the "Games for Health, Getting Down to Business" panel, which looked at the use of gamification in the pharmaceutical industry.

Currently engaged with the world's largest pharmaceutical company, Novartis, Walz addressed the need for game developers to proactively communicate with their pharmaceutical partners.

“Pharma, and we’re talking about big pharma, are large organisations, they have core products they want to keep selling, and they’re very very conservative,” Walz said. “That means we have to educate them … the real problem we’ve been facing is we have to explain to them what the use of games and game elements is and can be. Behavior change? That is of no use in a certification process, which is key to organizatons producing medical products and devices. There has to be a biometric marker. But how can we achieve that with a game?”

Translating game mechanics into actual strategies for the health sector has been something that Steffen and the GEElab Europe team have been working on for the past nine months - specifically for a game service that tackles Type 2 Diabetes. The game will be completed in 2015.

 

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Photo by Jean Cummiskey