I’ve always been someone who (pretty much) does what I’m told. When my parents or a doctor told me “Take your medicine”, I complied. However, I remember a number of years ago when I was taking an antibiotic for a bad kidney infection; I started to feel better and I wondered why I should continue to take the drug. It wasn’t until someone explained to me that by not taking all the medication, or even skipping a few pills, the bacteria-causing infection could become resistant to future antibiotic treatment – they’d be bigger, “badder”, bacteria. This tidbit of information made perfect sense to me and I’m pleased to report that today, I take all my medications as prescribed, even when I might not have any symptoms.

Based on my personal experiences, I was very surprised to learn what an extreme problem drug adherence is to the health care system. It appears that many, many people are not listening to their health care professionals about taking their medicine as they should.

Before looking at possible solutions to this national epidemic, let’s identify a few reasons patients don’t take, or sometimes, even fill, their prescriptions. One common reason is a lack of understanding about the disease or diagnosis for which the prescription was written. Other reasons may be concerns about the drug’s effectiveness, fears related to medical side-effects, lack of belief that they can control the disease, or like me with the antibiotic, they stop taking the medication because they are feeling better and don’t realize the side effects of not taking all of the prescription. It seems to me that many of these reasons for non-adherence can be addressed if people were provided with more information about both their medical conditions and how their medications can be of benefit.

One possible emerging solution to this information/education problem is the application of healthy games – multimedia experiences that are fun and deliver health benefits. Healthy games hold the potential for many benefits, including improving health literacy, physical fitness, cognitive fitness, condition management and motivating behavior change (like increasing the likelihood of drug adherence).

iConecto, a company working to empower personal health and organizational performance though healthy games, gaming technologies and social media, has collected the largest database of healthy games for consumers and professionals. In addition, iConecto is tracking the evidence and experience of the benefits of these games. Currently, there are over 35 documented studies which show that well-designed games can help engage and empower consumers health behaviors leading to higher treatment regime adherence, better overall health, and more clarity in communication with others about their conditions. These clinical studies have focused on a variety of areas, including cancer, asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, exercise/weight loss and brain games. This blog post will focus on a few examples related to improving drug adherence through the use of healthy games.

(more…)

It’s been 224 years since Paul Revere made his famous “Midnight Ride” from Boston to Lexington to warn the British were coming, but had Paul Revere been alive today he may have alerted people that the 5th Annual Games for Health Conference was being held in Boston on June 11 and 12. This year’s conference boasted a record number of attendees – nearly 400 people – and included over 55 sessions, three expo rooms, and two new tracks focused at some of the fastest growing areas in Health eGames – Exergaming and Cognitive Health.

I attended this year’s Games for Health Conference, giving a presentation on Healthy Advergaming and I also featured some new healthy gaming initiatives in the iConecto booth. At last year’s Games For Health Conference, we announced the launch of the Gaming4Health.com portal, the first online social network for Healthy Games. In addition to featuring updates to this portal, this year’s booth featured iConecto’s BrainXercise training for healthcare professionals. BrainXercise features a combination of cognitive training games and a number of skill and knowledge-based performance games developed by iConecto. The performance improvement games include fun titles like Associate Safety Leopardy (a quiz show like Jeopardy), Swine Flu Mania, and the Look-Alike, Sound-Alike Drug Matching game. The first deployment of BrainXercise is for Clinical Café, a social network for health care professionals focused on improving quality, safety and compliance, sponsored by Quantros, Inc.. Quantros delivers quality, safety and compliance reporting software solutions to thousands of hospitals and has hundreds of thousands of users.

In addition, we debuted the newly released exergame for the Wii, EA SPORTS Active. There was great interest in this game based on Kevin Chorney’s, the Producer of EA Sports Active, keynote speech. iConecto also gave demonstrations of the Gaming4Health.com space in the virtual world Second Life. This virtual presence makes it easy to give corporate demonstrations in a virtual space and show how immersive and entertaining training can be when combined with virtual worlds.

My presentation, titled “Health Advergames: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” took a comprehensive look at the history of Advergames in general, and how food companies, pharmaceutical companies, and organizations with a healthy behavior message are all trying advergames as a means to share their message. This is a topic area of extreme interest to the conference organizer, Ben Sawyer, who is hoping to have updates presented at each year’s conference. In the exergame area, companies like Disney and Kraft are developing games that use a dance pad and there is even a Sponge Bob SquarePants pedometer to encourage younger children to get active. In the healthy eating category, the point was raised about the power of food advergames to influence younger children’s desire for a given product. The caution is that there are many unhealthy food products also using advergames to sway children’s product loyalty. In the pharmaceutical arena, examples were provided from Mirapex (used to treat restless leg syndrome), Viagra and Nasonex. It was learned that the Viagra game was pulled because it failed to provide the FDA’s required product warnings within the game.

I believe the growth of health advergames will come from a variety of areas. These include: iPhone and other mobile applications, the use of advertising and advergames in virtual worlds, and the inclusion of health advergames as part of health-related web sites. The research has shown that web sites with games are able to capture audiences for longer periods of time.

Overall, this year’s Games for Health Conference was a great success. It is evident from the number and quality of the attendees that this particular area of Serious Games is being taken more seriously, both by game developers (like Nintendo and Electronic Arts) as well as those people from the medical arena that are looking at new and innovative ways to revolutionize healthcare.

The following is a guest post from Julia Loughran, a Digital Media and Gaming Solutions Expert with iConecto—Gaming4Health.
(Full Disclosure: Amplify Public Affairs is now the PR Strategic Partner for iConecto—Gaming4Health)

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak on Capitol Hill as part of a special event hosted by the same group that hosts this wonderful blog – Disruptive Women in Health Care, and its media partner The Hill. The topic was Health eGaming, Healthy Patients: Supporting Stimulus Goals Through Health eGaming. I was there to speak about the opportunities health eGames can bring to healthcare, both as forms of preventative care (e.g., exer-games that get people up and moving and games that promote healthy behaviors, like healthy eating and smoking cessation), as well as games that can help with acute and chronic disease management (e.g., asthma, cancer and diabetes).

The Honorable Nancy L. Johnson, Former Chair of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee opened the session, stressing that change was needed in health care and one of the main changes was the need to focus on the patient. “The real reason the patient is going to become the most important person in the healthcare system,” according to Johnson, is “you can’t do prevention without them.”

This point really resonated with me because it made me think about personal responsibility. When it comes right down to it, our health and the reform of our health behaviors rests in our own hands. We have the tools, the information, and now hundreds of health eGames that can help us live healthier and longer lives. Do we need to wait for the U.S. government to prescribe these games (which I understand will take years of slogging through regulatory barriers and miles of bureaucratic paperwork), or can we all just go out and start taking advantage of the great stuff already out there?

iConecto has done the leg work to capture a database of the nearly 600 health eGames and 500 plus mobile applications, many of which are featured and reviewed on our consumer portal Gaming4Health.com. So, if you want to be more active, why not try out some of the many titles designed for the Wii? We had Congressional Staffers at yesterday’s event that were breaking into a real sweat after just a few minutes jogging to a game on Active Life’s Outdoor Challenge. Exer-games like Outdoor Challenge, Wii Fit, and Dance, Dance Revolution are a much better way to spend an evening with your family instead of passively watching Dancing With the Stars on TV. But, if Dancing with the Stars is something you love, then why not do it yourself with the Wii version? And if it is your brain you want to exercise, there are many web sites filled with fun and interactive games that will give your gray matter a work out. Some of the popular brain fitness sites include Happy Neuron, Sharp Brains, and Lumosity.

Being healthy and having an active lifestyle isn’t as hard as it used to be. Today there are mobile and iPhone apps that will provide you with your own virtual fitness coach, or you can try yoga or track your steps, or if you are competitive, you can find online health and fitness competitions.

We all have the resources to be healthier, we just need to step up to the plate and take responsibility for leading healthier lives – and there is no reason why we can’t have a lot of fun while we shed a few pounds, eat better, and work our noggins. So, what are you waiting for? Get out and play a little. It will be fun and good for you!

View photos from this event on Facebook, or on Flickr, and see The Hill’s video coverage here, and The Washington Post’s coverage here.