IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015 - 82

This pilot study did demonstrate
that this population was very open
and willing to engage in digital,
game-like educational environments.
game for children to play in the waiting room before their appointments. The goal was to teach the children, especially those from
lower-income and/or non-English-speaking households, how the
flu vaccine works and show them why it is important to get it.
This project was uniquely suited for testing efficacy because the
goal was to see if the child would actually get the vaccine during
the appointment following the game play.
Once again, it was difficult to test the game during development due to Institutional Review Board constraints and problems with obtaining permissions. We were, however, able to
find enough volunteers in the target population age range to
test both the English and Spanish versions of the game during
development. There were few technical difficulties with
deployment because EGG Lab developers were able to install
and test the game on the laptops that the field team used in the
clinic waiting rooms, and children in the United States had no
difficulty learning or playing the game on these familiar devices (Figures 2 and 3).
The results of the pilot study demonstrated that very few
(27%) of the young patients were able to answer questions about
what the flu virus is and how the vaccine works after playing the
game. The questionnaire was not specific enough to help us
understand why this was the case. It does point out the need to
conduct iterative testing of the game on the actual target population to tailor the game to the specific needs of the target group.
The game clearly changed behavior, however, because 92% of

FIGURE 3. Winthrop Pediatric Associates patient Patrick Robinson
testing the Flu Busters game with researcher Ann Mock. (Photo
courtesy of Leanna Cherry, Winthrop-University Hospital.)
82 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

july 2015

the children who played the game agreed to be vaccinated compared to the 42% rate for the rest of the patients of the clinic.
Given the amount of misinformation circulating about vaccinations, interventions like this one have the potential to have a very
positive impact.

CONCLUSIONS
These two projects were both funded by small research grants
aimed at giving young physicians the opportunity to explore
innovations in medical practices. Applying game practices and
technologies to intractable problems in health care has a great
deal of potential and allows for creative collaborations between
hardware and software developers, content creators, and medical
personnel. The IEEE GEM Conference in Toronto in October
2015 welcomes submissions from others working with applied
games who wish to share their research, seek out collaborators,
and explore future possibilities in this developing area.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Elena Bertozzi (elena.bertozzi@quinnipiac.edu) is an associate professor of game design and development at Quinnipiac
University and director of Engender Games Group.

Dilys Walker (Dilys.Walker@ucsf.edu) is an obstetrician,
gynecologist, and professor in the Department of Obstetrics,
Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, Bixby Center for
Global Reproductive Health at the University of California San
Francisco. She is a founding member of PRONTO International.
Leonard Krilov (lkrilov@winthrop.org) is the vice chair of the
Department of Pediatrics and the chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Children's Medical Center at Winthrop-University
Hospital, Mineola, New York, and a professor of pediatrics at the
State University of New York Stony Brook School of Medicine.
Carrie Rouse (cerouse@partners.org) is a maternal fetal
medicine fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
Claudia Halaby (chalaby@winthrop.org) is a pediatric
pulmonary attending and associate director for the Pediatric
Pulmonary Fellowship at the Children's Medical Center at
Winthrop-University Hospital, Mineola, New York, and an
assistant professor of pediatrics at the State University of
New York Stony Brook School of Medicine.
Ann Mock (amock@winthrop.org) is the clinical research coordinator for the Department of Pediatrics at the Children's Medical
Center at Winthrop-University Hospital, Mineola, New York.
Melodi Pirzada (mpirzada@winthrop.org) is the chief of
pediatric pulmonary medicine and the director of the Pediatric
Pulmonary Fellowship Training Program at the Children's
Medical Center at Winthrop-University Hospital, Mineola,
New York, and a clinical associate professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Robert Lee (rlee@winthrop.org) is an attending physician
at Winthrop Pediatric Associates and associate program director for the Winthrop-University Hospital Pediatric Residency
Program and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the State
University of New York Stony Brook School of Medicine.

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