From Games to Health book summary

«From Games to Health: Lessons Learnt from the Video Games Industry» is a book that explores the potential for video games to be used in healthcare. The book draws on the author’s experience working in the video game industry and her subsequent work in healthcare. It discusses how the principles of game design can be applied to healthcare to improve patient engagement, motivation, and outcomes.

The book covers topics such as gamification, game-based learning, and the use of virtual and augmented reality in healthcare. It provides practical guidance for healthcare professionals and developers on how to design effective and engaging health games.

Overall, the book offers insights into how the video game industry can inform and enhance healthcare, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in the intersection of gaming and healthcare.

What I´m up to now

I was in Utrecht, for Games For Health Europe, a few weeks ago, and had this great interview there. It gives me the opportunity to explain in detail about my company PlayBenefit, about Benergy (our first mobile app that’s about to come to life), and how I got until here 😉 Hope you enjoy it!

Healthcare Initiatives – Beware of Skype

I know several healthcare initiatives are using Skype to support remote care, at least in Spain.

I would like to reflect two things about using Skype in those cases:

Games for Health 2012 – Presentation

Hello everyone!
After landing safely in Spain and getting some much deserved sleep before starting to work non stop, I decided it would be about time I post what I presented in the Games for Health #GFH12EU which was a wonderful event.

I have been in several conferences recently and this one was by far the most «open» one when it came to enter circles of people. Everyone was friendly and had great ideas! I enjoyed the event as well as my coffees with the attendees and other speakers a lot.

So here is my presentation, and it seems like we will see this «World of Warcraft Diabetes Mod» life sometime mid 2013 thanks to Stephen Jacobs, from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Games for Health 2012!

On December 1st 2011 I started this blog. My second post was about an important initiative in which I really believed: the first edition of Games for Health Europe.

Now, several months later and after a lot of hard work, I have just found out that I will be a speaker in that congress. I can barely put into words what this oportunity means to me, being such a believer in the cause and the need. I thought that such an occasion deserved a peek preview on my blog, so here’s what I will be talking about in the Games for Health 2012 conference.

Digital evolution and different ways of seeing it

Hello!

This is a very short post and not really thought, but I saw something and I wanted to share it with all of you, maybe you find it an interesting debate as well.

So I came across a widely spread video about the «Google Glasses» which is pretty cool, it’s like having a smartphone with voice recognition, GPS and so on but implemented on your glasses so it reproduces all the information you need instantly in front of your eyes instead of the mobile. Most of you will have seen this video before:

What is Gamification?

Gamification is a concept taken from video games and it refers to the use of game design techniques and game mechanics to turn tasks/work into a fun experience. Today we can find the gamification context applied pretty much everywhere, from social media, marketing, business, education, health… It’s used in different contexts to motivate users to shop, learn, work, etc.

This concept was born around 2004 to gain popularity in 2007 to become a trend in 2010. Even though it’s a concept that’s quite developed and studied nowadays, and that there are many who have managed to do wonderful things with it, there’s still many who think gamification is about adding a badge system and achievements. There are many examples of gamification, I’ll leave you with a couple less commercial which hit closer to home for many of us.

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.

AppsONhealth

Today it’s my birthday! And since the last two days I’ve been ill, I haven’t managed to post about this very interesting congress I attended on Monday.

AppsONhealth was held on the St. Joan de Deu Hospital in Barcelona, was free and it had free coffee during the coffee breaks, which was great to help attendees cope with the amount of information «thrown» at us during the day. For more information about the event, click here.

The first speaker was Chia Hwu, CEO in Qubop (@chiah) who talked to us about the different platforms and the chances of success in this industry, which is pretty and competitive. She introduced us to Mobile web and mobile app, gave us plenty of diagrams with sales numbers (apps and