What is Exergaming?

A while ago we had a meeting-party with some nurses that are Twitter users (a Tweet party!) organized by the Innovation Technologies group which I’m part of, for the Official Nurse College in Barcelona. It was a great evening, I got to meet many great people that want and see the need to apply new technologies and their potential in hospitals, primary care centers and healthcare in general.

Towards the end, we all had our 5 minutes of glory to share what we were currently working on or our personal interest in ICT. When I mentioned my interest for exergaming platforms I saw many faces that were telling me they had no idea what it was, so I was encouraged to do a little entry on my blog about it.

¿Qué es el Exergaming?

Este viernes tuve el placer de encontrarme con compañeros enfermeros del Twitter en una Tweetparty organizada por el grupo de Innovación y Tecnología del Colegio de Enfermeras de Barcelona el que pertenezco. Fue una velada muy agradable en la que no solo «tuiteamos» sino que además nos contamos los unos a los otros cómo aplicar el potencial de las nuevas tecnologías en el hospital, en el centro de asistencia primaria y en la salud en general. Luego tuvimos nuestros 5 minutos de glória cada uno y yo conté mi proyecto de plataforma de exergaming y vi muchas caras de interrogación, así que he pensado que haría una pequeña entrada en el blog explicando qué es y para qué puede servir.

Connecting the worlds of video games and health: How I got to know this movement

I have been a gamer all my life. I started gaming before I knew how a computer worked because my older brother whom I bothered for attention a lot, invited me to his gaming sessions (his way of giving me attention). At the time I was about five and would cry desperately because “oxygen” was running out on my character, giving my mom a couple of scares as well as my brother, when he saw his Amstrad computer wasn’t working because I had inserted one of my Candy cards in it to try to play a game. So, many years and games have passed, and when I was working for Blizzard Entertainment as a nurse it occurred to me that why not make health games. The idea came as I was writing advice on the intranet and I thought “this would be so much easier to understand and apply if it was a game” and it got me thinking. When I got home that day I did some research and