Following North America, health games are gaining popularity among IT professionals and public populations in Europe.  Main events are organized throughout the old continent, and complementary or challenging solutions are emerging transforming this regional market in a true valuable world market.

As a matter of fact, Interaction Healthcare, a French Health communication agency has recently announced it will promote and distribute Pulse ! the multi-million dollar cutting edge 3D medical and clinical training professional healthgame developed by Texas A&M University and Breakawaygames.com. This French agency was known for its on-line game “Don’t kid with their eyes” dedicated to vision for the young public and developed with the eye-glass world leader Essilor. Europe is also developing complementary solutions like “Patient Rescue” a UK National Health System supported game or the Spanish Medical Simulator.

North Europe countries have also entered in the game field like in Sweden where the University of Skövde has co-developed Elinor, a game based tool for rehabilitation of stroke patients. Interestingly, this University has launched this year the first European Master Degree in Serious games.

At the European Community level, some effort has been put on ehealth. However, there are few projects dedicated to health games. It is interesting to point out this multi-national initiative eldergames.org where experts from Spain, UK and Norway collaborate to create a video play platform connected to internet to monitor cognitive health and welfare in the growing elder population.

I believe 2010 will be an interesting year as we should have a lot of new free or commercial health games coming to market and could be regarded as a critical year for defining trends either in Europe or US.