I'm back at Games for Health for the second day this morning. As with yesterday, I'll be covering the sessions as they happen (save the ones I'm participating in).

Covered talks from today:

Games for Heatlh: The State Perspective
Chris Foster - Maryland Deputy Director of Business and Economic Development

TATRC Medical Modeling and Simulation
J. Harvey Magee - Harvey McGee - TATRC (Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center)

Personal Health Record: An Interactive Portal for your Health
Omid Moghadam - Personal Health Record Programs, Intel Digital Health Group

Game Technologies and Future Healthcare Opportunities
Ariella Lehrer - Legacy Interactive

Advergaming of Prescription Medicine
Ian Bogost - Persuasive Games / The Georgia Institute of Technology

Interactive Entertainment Technologies for Healthcare Training

Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments for Emergency Medicine
Patricia Youngblood et al - Standford University / Forterra systems

Click through for the session by session coverage. Games for Health 2005 is now over and my coverage is complete.

Update: My wrap-up is now available via Gamasutra.

Games for Heatlh: The State Perspective
Chris Foster - Maryland Deputy Director of Business and Economic Development

Foster talked about the opportunities and problems that the state of Maryland are funding or considering funding. They don't target specific industries, but currently it is 45% life sciences. Traditionally, medical device technologies and products have been the targets. However, looking forward, the savings from electronic health records (in terms of lives and costs) are suggesting a number of new opportunities. Foster argued that the rest of the world looks to the US to solve health care problems.

TATRC Medical Modeling and Simulation
J. Harvey Magee - Harvey McGee - TATRC (Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center)

TATRC is a US Army agency that applies physiological and medical knowledge and simulations for medical decision-making and training. They focus on medical R&D, specifically trying to create industrial opportunities in medical modeling and simulation.

They strive to improve trauma training and reduce medical errors through medical modeling and simulation. Out of gaming technology, TATRC hopes to help young army men and women perform their job in the field around the world. Combat medicine. Magee showed a video used to introduce the very youngest and greenest new soldiers to combat medicine and the challenges of providing acute care during live combat situations. It claimed that simple procedures can help save up to 70 - 90% of combat wounded on the battlefield.

Simulated environments can impact trainees, and medical simulation is disruptive -- it can disrupt and revolutionize the medical profession. Simulation effectiveness is the biggest challenge in the area. They use digitally enhanced mannequins, PC training, and VR training. These environments provide case-based scenarios and provide courseware.

Personal Health Record: An Interactive Portal for your Health
Omid Moghadam - Personal Health Record Programs, Intel Digital Health Group

The Intel digital health group is a n 8 month old initiative in Intel devoted to using silicon technology in diagnois and software for healthcrae. Moghadam talked about hte idea of games for disease management. Personal health records have a role in remedying the cost/wuality disparity, unsustainable cost increases, and no reasonable consumer force in the market. Healthcare IT has some role in remedying this situation, but regional health information.

Personal health records (PHR) are patient-directed gathering and augmentation of consumers' own medical information This is the method by which services can be delivered to consumers. The transaction systems for PHR include remote medical systems, patient data, pharmacies, primary care physicianms, hospitals, and soecialists. Right now, we only have patient sourcfed data -- information the patient provides themselves. A new national infrastructure will manage hospitals, physicials and labs. But a game-based disease management tool cna encourage adherence to a disease management regimen. Even a non-digital tool can help save over $250,000/year in the case of diabetes. Game engines can provide and process data from multiple sources, simulating the progression of a disease for patient monitoring.

Game Technologies and Future Healthcare Opportunities
Ariella Lehrer - Legacy Interactive

Lehrer talked about a scripting language Legacy created to address character behavior. Lehrer mentioned a Vioxx game Merck created to address the training goals of the Merck sales force, which they called "Dodge" -- a name that created legal problems for the company.

There is a need for improved AI tools, including middleware and scripting languages Legacy created STORI, an scripting language used to create actor behavior in their ER game create interactions between characters and their environments. Because it's a technology framework, it can work cross platform and with outer higher level game engines or graphics systems. STORI was designed to be a designer-scriptable tool to create interaction. While the language is still too technical for some designers, it increased the accessibility of the behavior authoring.

STORI in the ER game released in June. In the game, you start as an intern and work your way through seven episodes of skills and missions. The AI language controls the diagnosis and treatment processes, interactions, and episodic content. You also have to keep track of hygiene, food, rest, and composure to manage patients most effectively. The player selects attributes and his or her skills are based on them. Each episodes includes multiple plot lines, for example assigning interns to new patients If one of your interns kills a patient, you get fired.

The player is also affected by the attitude of others when they are in your company. The characters from the show are internally motivated and are managed by the STORI AI system. Your relationships can help or hinder your ability to treat patients.

STORI also controls patients in the waiting room, like waves of patients, totaling over 100 characters total in the hospital all interacting with one another. The game also adds perks and special abilities (such as kissing other doctors). A Sims-style affinity system allows players to build bonds with other in-game characters.

The game has no medical content -- but Lehrer suggested that the framework for the game could be extended with real medical information and problems to increase the depth of interaction for more formal training. Lehrer offered that while Legacy is not a tool company, they could license STORI to interested parties.

Advergaming of Prescription Medicine
Ian Bogost - Persuasive Games / The Georgia Institute of Technology

I couldn't blog my own talk, but luckily Michael Mateas did over on Grand Text Auto.

Interactive Entertainment Technologies for Healthcare Training

The ETC and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center worked are interested in textbook to real world training integration, of which gaming is a part. Simple initiatives can save lives in critical hospital situations, or everyday situations.

Crisis Team Training is a training program for 7 people to teach responses to chaotic situations. They adapted NASCAR techniques -- the pit crew has to work fast and accurately every time. How come doctors and nurses can't? The curriculum teaches this approach with traditional, real-life simulation, and it's time consuming and expensive.

The groups developed a game in which players have to treat a patient while dealing with the softer issues related to managing the room and each other during crisis. For example, the simulation includes a concept of "blocking" -- doctors and nurses can be in each others way and the players need to contend with that situation in the environment. The players communicate with each other in the same room to accomplish the healthcare tasks required. The game was built in Panda3D, a low-cost 3D game engine.

The group demonstrated a 3-minute "code" emergency. Amusingly, the game crashed! But, it was effective display of the time-sensitive collaboration required in the game.

Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments for Emergency Medicine
Patricia Youngblood et al - Standford University / Forterra systems

Stanford and Forterra collaborated on a SimTech game, a virtual emergency education simulator. They also created a First Responder Training system, both built in Forterra, the company that used to be There.com (and uses the There technology). Like the last demo, this is a multiplayer emergency medicine crisis resource management training tool, adapted from standard research and training practices.

Because There is a virtual world with voice support, the scenario can be played out with users distributed around the world. Next they hope to do the debrief online to support both training and summary in the virtual world, since physically distributed teams can often benefit from training together remotely.