Growing up, my brothers and I would play N64. To this day, MarioKart and MarioParty are my favorite video games. I never thought I'd be blogging about video games for my job, but when you can apply gaming to real life health care challenges, I can't help but notice.
Most health-savvy gamers are familiar with the landmark health care video game case: the Corrupted Blood incident on World of Warcraft. In 2005, a "virtual plague outbreak" occurred on the multiplayer online role-playing game. While the outbreak was actually glitch in the video game system, the virtual plague's resemblance to a real world epidemic drew attention from epidemiologists and other public health professionals. The prestigious medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, even published an analysis of the video game outbreak. 
At a brainstorming session last month for Digital Capital Week, a district-wide festival focused on digital innovation, we discussed the idea for a video game combating HIV/AIDS in the nation's capital. In collaboration with the health care folks in the room, video game enthusiast Limor Schafman and other DC Week particiants proposed the idea for a video game that could address HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases in Washington, D.C. Currently, there is an NIH-funded interactive video game in the works for HIV prevention in at-risk adolescents, but our plan is to develop a game, or perhaps multiple games, to reach the target populations in Washington, D.C.
Limor Schafman, President of KeystoneTech Group and Chief Instigator of serious games meetup Games Gateway, said she plans to coordinate a DC Week workshop to bring together subject matter experts to discuss ideas and determine key audiences and purposes for the HIV/AIDS game. At this time, she's envisioning a simple flash game for mobile or PC use, but she's not sure if its primary goal will encourage treatment activity or teach preventative behavior. Ultimately, it will be up to the participants at the workshop to decide what the best plan of action is.
As it stands, the idea is still in the works - but take a minute to consider the potential of health care gaming. In some ways, it seems counterintuitive to associate video games with being healthy, given the studies about video games increasing risk of childhood obesity. However, Limor explained that gaming can be really useful in imparting information to patients or helping doctors with simulations for surgery. In 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a study on cancer patient behavior and video games. According to the study, the video game intervention significantly improved adherence to treatments and enhanced the young adult's cancer-related self-efficacy and knowledge.
Later this month, Games for Health will be holding its sixth annual conference in Boston. The conference will provide research and strategy updates on the growing world of "exergaming," health training games and disease management efforts. Games for Health is a part of the Serious Games Initiative, which explores uses for games that address management and leadership challenges facing the public sector, including education, training, health and public policy.
Let us know your thoughts on the idea for an educational HIV/AIDS video game in D.C. Digital Capital Week is all about social activism and positive change through digital creativity. How can we make a change in the epidemic that affects 3 percent of D.C. residents?
For more information on DC Week, check out their website. In additional to working on this project, Spectrum will be hosting two sessions during the week: Health care Communication Strategies and The Data We've All Left Behind: Uncovering The Social Media Data Trail.
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