Have you taken the challenge yet?  “What challenge?”, you ask. The Health 2.0 Developer Challenge or those on Challenge Post. These sites take advantage of the recent US initiative to make health databases available to the public. Since 2010, both sites have hosted challenges sponsored by organizations,...

Nick Yee, PhD, a research scientist at the PARC (the Palo Alto Research Center) has published studies that show how people’s behaviors change when they use avatars. One study notes how players engage when offered tall, attractive avatars, versus shorter, less attractive ones. He suggests that people...

I received a very nice note from Dr. Sylvester Arnab of the Serious Games Institute requesting leads on researchers and practitioners interested in helping contribute to a new book called Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications.  Hopefully you healthgamers can be of assistance! Similar...

The symposium. The latest issue of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology was just released, and it includes a special section summarizing all the talks given at the NIH-sponsored Virtual Reality Technologies for Research and Education in Obesity and Diabetes Symposium. During this meeting, researchers...

Our friends at Kognito Interactive just informed me that their suicide-prevention gatekeeper training simulation game, At-Risk, has gone through yet another study with significant results. Texas and New York have already adopted the At-Risk product to train over 70,000 teachers, and this new research...

Health care’s most vexing problem. I have never met Dr. Joseph C. Kvedar of Partners HealthCare’s Center for Connected Health, Susannah Fox of Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, or Professor Andy Clark of Edinburgh University face to face in the real world. And yet they...

American Journal of Preventive Medicine reports on randomized clinical trial American Journal of Preventative Medicine, Elsevier: San Diego, CA, December 7, 2010 – Obesity in youngsters has risen dramatically in recent decades. Fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption and increased water intake can lower...

The ePatient Connections conference held in Philadelphia last month brought together advocates, professionals and speakers from various parts of the healthcare spectrum. Kevin Kruse of Kru Research began the event two years ago and it has since grown tremendously. One of the tracks during the conference...

When you think of videogames and kids, you naturally picture in your mind an overweight child with poor nutritional habits playing for hours without leaving the sofa or the desk chair.  In order to address this situation, many attempts have been made to combine videogames and activity. Exergaming There...

Using the Internet to host games that promote preventative or therapeutic strategies for mental health is a relatively fresh concept that deserves some attention. Reach Out Central (ROC) is a serious game designed for online use by individuals aged 16-25, and its creators are still conducting research...