Insight into Serious Games

[Veronika Lukomska]

Hello All,

I am currently a final year student at the University of the Arts in Norwich studying Game art and Design. I will be writing an end of year report about "What do serious games in surgery have to offer". 

I am wondering would anyone be interested in giving me insight into the industry but also offering to share any information you know about What do serious games have to offer medical professionals, students, patients themselves in surgery? The information you provide will help me immensely in my research and also give a better understanding of the Serious Games industry. 

Key aspects I would like to find out are:

• Advantages and disadvantages-patient safety, learning/training techniques compared to traditional methods, time and money efficient.
  
• The difficulties when developing games for the purpose of education.
• Serious games offer a risk free environment when training for surgeries, enabling the player to repeat a technique or procedure without serious consequences. Do you think this has any advantages or disadvantages for training and application to real life procedures? 
  

Any help would be welcome

Thank you in advance

[Alex P.Real]

Hello Veronika,

What a fascinating topic! I'm afraid I'm not into surgery, but I deal with patients' associations and medical professionals (mainly neurologists) from the advocacy & educational perspectives. I see three main drawbacks:

1. The cost of existing AR/VR solutions is not realistic (yet) & less sophisticated products do not provide a proper or "real" simulation. At least here (Spain), people donate corpses and there is no shortage at all. "Dealing with a corpse" is actually envisaged as an educational rite de passage.
   
2. Mentality: With a few exceptions, the vast majority is rather conservative. I've shared several Hololens videos (e.g. anatomy lessons) and the reaction has been mixed: Fun but not "real" unless "you touch the body".
   
3. ICT equipment in place is probably not up to it (at both universities & educational hospitals). And this "subculture of cuts" doesn't help at all due to short-term thinking.
   

If you believe I can be of assistance, please give me a shout off-list.

Best wishes,

Alex P. Real

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