Games for Health conference in Baltimore highlights creative use of

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Sep 22, 2005 by Joe Bacchus

Video games aren't just for kids passing the time these days.

Modern gaming technology also allows the chance for new ways to look at diseases and disease treatment, which is the theme of the Games for Health conference underway today and tomorrow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The conference is sponsored in part by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development and Digitalmill Inc., a Maine- based serious gaming policy group.

Ben Sawyer, co-director of Digitalmill's Games for Health Project, said advances in video and audio technology, as well as the ability to create better artificial intelligence, means game programmers can do today what was only a dream in the past. He added that the interactive nature of serious gaming - using video game platforms to teach real world skills - makes it an ideal tool for advancing possibilities in health care.

Gaming is the first media form to come along that asks you to be a participant, Sawyer said. It asks you to be involved.

Among the event's expected 200 attendees will be representatives from BreakAway Ltd., a gaming company located in Hunt Valley. Deborah Tillett, the company's president, said gaming allows the chance to learn difficult skills, such as surgery or disaster management, without fear of failure.

It's the opportunity to create a simulated environment that makes it safe to fail, Tillett said. Wouldn't you rather your surgeon practiced a thousand times in a virtual world than just 10 times in the real?

However, she was careful to note simulations were not meant to replace real, hands-on experience, but to augment it. She said a good example of well-applied, serious gaming could be found in the U.S. military, which ran war games as far back as the 1800s. Tillett said the military and health care industry share training needs.

You have to take young, inexperienced individuals and give them the training and information, and turn it into knowledge and experience, she said.

Sawyer said the presence of gaming companies such as Breakaway Ltd. and Take 2 Games, as well as government resources such as the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, make Maryland an ideal location for the second annual gaming conference.

Sawyer said the goal of the conference is to bring different groups together, helping them make connections they might not find otherwise. He added that in addition to teaching people what's available right now, the conference is also meant to help people get an idea of what the future holds for serious gaming.

We're trying to give them a sense of what can be done, Sawyer said. The art of the present, to show them what's possible, and what's next.