Local video game developers are serious about more than providing faithful simulations of combat emergency medicine in 3-D. They are poised to come of age as an industry.
“We?re seeing a lot of corporations and different government agencies that are actually doing pilots right now,” said John Burwell, a developer for Rockville based Forterra Systems Inc., which develops 3-D simulations for emergency, military and corporate clients. “One or two years ago, there was a lot of interest in this technology, now they?re putting down major amounts of money.”
Over the next year, he expects limited rollouts of training platforms for the Department of Defense and other clients. Once those training scenarios and simulations are developed, agencies could begin training tomorrow?s soldiers in urban combat or operations anywhere in the world.
Hunt Valley developer Breakaway Ltd., meanwhile, developed a world-modeling platform called Mosbe that can simulate any real-world location using satellite, topographic and other information.
“You can create simulations in a real Baltimore with all the fire stations where they are in the real world, all the police stations,” said Executive Producer Ed Fletcher.
Breakaway also developed Pulse!! a physician training simulation for Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and is adapting the Pulse!! platform for the Medical College of Georgia’s nursing students.
“All the nursing schools are filled and there?s not enough nurses graduating,” Fletcher said. “The idea is to model training outside the university.”
Both companies displayed their latest improvements and tools at the 2008 Games for Health conference in Baltimore this week. Although health-related games make up a small fraction of the $9 billion interactive entertainment industry, they have immense potential to aid healing and help train health care workers, say organizers from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Research shows that in addition to helping emergency responders and training health care professionals, health-related games can improve the health of people suffering chronic illnesses or pain.
“A diabetes game reduced urgent care visits for kids with diabetes an average of 60 to 70 percent,” said Debra Lieberman of Health Games Research, an $8.25 million national program by RWJF that seeks to verify the effectiveness of health games.
