Vietnam’s online addiction courses
Posted on | October 19, 2008
I noticed this interesting news article at the Thanh Nien Daily.
Essentially, it’s an intensive course running on weekends for two months. On the face of it it seems a useful option for those with issues impacting their lives detrimentally. Looking a little closer though, and the alarm bells start ringing. Take this for example:
During treatment, teens will work with psychologists and health experts to improve their self esteem; develop other interests and teamwork skills; and learn how to avoid temptations.
There’s some big assumptions there on self-esteem and the approach seems very conservative: ‘avoiding temptation’. It’s a tone that will appeal to parents but one that’ll concern the actual target group. The even more obvious question is: who is assessing that the teen is addicted? What assessment criteria are being used?
On the positive side, there does seem to be a little more than the 21st Century equivalent of an AA meeting:
Also included in the program is a “Box of Emotion” where each student is encouraged to write out their emotions and thoughts since the beginning of the program. The box will be opened in the course’s sixth week with participation from the students’ parents.
The treatment approach seems to be one of reality checking with some real-world skill building:
“Most online game addicts fail to face the real world but want to become ‘heroes’ in the virtual world,” Lien said. “[Through the program] we hope to bring them back to the real world and help them discover their own abilities.”
There’s even some good old community and family work involved:
Parents also take part in other social activities with their children like washing their own shirts to donate to disadvantaged students through charitable organizations.
Will it work? Possibly, though to some participants it will feel like hell on earth for the duration. My main concern is defining where intervention actually needs to occur. Forcing people into treatment where there’s no true issue is not a lot different from sending someone to prison for jaywalking.
Health - spread the word!
Posted on | October 10, 2008
Delivering health messages to the general public is difficult at the best of times. It’s tough to capture the attention of people when talking about health – unless it’s their area of expertise, most people don’t want to be bothered thinking about their health any more than is strictly necessary. Those who are healthy often take that for granted; those with known health problems often don’t want to have to think about having additional problems. Preventative medicine has not achieved high penetration within public view, let alone getting people to take good care of existing illnesses.
All this is true in the atomic world, where conventional means of education and advertisement have existed for decades. How daunting, then, is it to imagine trying to bring these messages to people through a new medium like digital environments? Even large companies with huge budgets and design teams have had difficulty conveying their messages to people through digital environments.
A large part of the solution lies in a statement that far easier said than carried out: use digital environments to their advantage. Designers need to find ways of conveying their ideas to users in a way that is enhanced by the digital environment. There’s too many examples of stark buildings with uncertain purpose, and montages of bits and pieces of information that could be better displayed and searched through using web pages, in existing health installations in digital environments – this money could have been better spent elsewhere.
One of the big advantages to digital environments is that information can be gathered by users interactively. A display that encourages an action to be carried by the user, and that engages the user, increases the likelihood that they will continue to peruse even static parts of your installation. Moderation is key – some interactivity in some displays is good, but too much can be overwhelming, and can detract from purpose. Also, there is nothing wrong with a bit of fun in health education, and a bit of interactivity can lend itself to the light-hearted, but again, there must be a point to it all, or you will quickly lose your audience.
So I had a bit of a think about the type of interactive display that I, as an end user, might find both useful and engaging, and also that I, as a programmer and animator, might have some ability to construct. This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list, or an indication of what I believe is most needed, it is intended to assist health care professionals and designers come up with their own notions as to what they might like to contribute to the building of their own installations.
- A garden full of digital plants that closely resemble the atomic versions, in which each of the plants can be clicked on to elicit information about the properties of the plant. This could be used for dispensing information about herbal and traditional remedies, or could give information about the chemical compounds used in modern-day drugs that are sourced from plant matter.
- A display about interactions between commonly prescribed and common over-the-counter drugs. Bottles or packs of the drugs could be on display, and when a user clicks on a bottle or pack a single dose is “consumed” by their avatar. The user can select two or more different drugs to take. Depending on the possible interactions, the avatar can be animated to demonstrate the effect, or simply given a notecard with information about their condition after taking the drugs.
- The mock-up MRI. The user clicks on the apparatus to have their avatar lie down in place. As the bed moves, the user can rotate their camera view around to a screen displaying slices of a normal human body. As another possibility, give the option to display anomalous data and let the user attempt to find the anomaly, testing via a quiz if that seems interesting or useful.
- The “brain storm” exhibit. A possibly artistic representation of the brain with depictions of electrical activity, allowing the user to select whether to view a demonstration of a normal, epileptic or fibromyalgic brain.
- “Pin the bone on the skeleton” – see if users can put a missing bone back in place in a skeleton.
- Avatars can be animated to walk as though they have a physical impairment, and users can attempt to guess what is causing that gait.
- Self-assessment information. How to test yourself at home for a variety of health problems, potentially with demonstrations if applicable.
- First aid classes. This requires the on-going support of an instructor to deliver the course material. This course could bring people into a health-related region, with more extensive static information available for after-class examination.
- Release skins that avatars can wear with bones, or musculature, or arterial, venous or lymphatic systems textured onto them.
- Bots with even a limited capacity for chat. As long as the bot’s abilities are cited up front, this can be a good way of dispensing pertinent user information without having an actual human being at the keyboard.
- Fill a facility with animated bots so that the user ends up perusing a facility to find the bots and see what they are doing. Bot placement and activity might be suggestive of actual staffing levels at an atomic facility.
- Health-based machinima. Use digital environments to create movies that would be overly costly or difficult to create in the atomic world, and then display them in-world.
One further note on information distributed:
It’s been my experience that the information available in health installations in digital worlds has either been insultingly simplistic (for example, the Second Life Main grid is for adults only, and I have seen plenty of information suited to a younger audience) or overly complicated and dense for members of the public. It would be nice to see more examples of grading of information, dispensed through a notecard system, in which the user can choose which grade to read at, and can choose to upgrade when their knowledge and understanding have increased.
Health education for public consumption is tricky. Digital environments are a fantastic way of reaching new niche markets and consolidating new ones. However, the techniques used in the atomic world cannot be simply transported into the digital – keep those in the atomic, if they are working well there. Find the new things that the digital world can do for you and capitalize on those.
One ex-gamer’s perspective on MMO addiction
Posted on | October 3, 2008
The individual ex-addict’s perspective has always held power, no matter the source of the addiction. In the MMO gaming sphere, a recent addition to the blogosphere is ExGamer.net. Run by a 40-year old Canadian guy and 44-year old Dutch woman, it’s a blog in its early stages but it does give some interesting personal insights from a Christian and 12 Step perspective.
Thanks to Adrian Bott at Massively for the heads-up. If you know of other sites providing personal addiction stories with a virtual world context, we’d love to hear from you.
‘Rogues Gallery’ health event in Second Life
Posted on | September 23, 2008
There’s a small but growing group in Second Life called Healthcare Education. The group was founded by the University of Michigan’s Patricia Anderson (SL: Perplexity Peccable) and a seminar series has been organised for the 26th September at 7.00am SL time (Midnight on the 26th AET).
The event will be held on Health EduIsland and the first speaker will be Pathfinder Linden, providing a brief introduction to health in Second Life, and asking what healthcare educators most want from Linden Labs.
Patricia has supplied the itinerary:
The format will be:
- 7:00-7:30 - Pathfinder will talk for a half hour.
- 7:30-8:30 - We’ll break into small groups, talk and party, and gather our thoughts for an hour. During this time the “Rogue’s Gallery” will be on display (also known as Who’s Who in SL Health Education). We also have display space available. DrDoug has volunteered to put something up to start, and we can rotate displays.
- 8:30-9:00 - Pathfinder will come back and listen to whatever we’ve decided is most important to share with him. If you have personal observations to share, you may want to consider formalizing your thoughts in a notecard to drop in his inventory during the event.Remember, to receive inworld announcements, please join the group Healthcare Education. If you can’t find it in search, you can find it in my Profile listing of groups: Perplexity Peccable.
Hope to see you all there!
Stepping into Health Conference
Posted on | September 14, 2008
I ran across the following promo this week:
“Stepping into Health” becomes Third in Popular “Stepping into Virtual Worlds” Series
Using virtual worlds to promote health and healthcare is the topic of the next installment of the popular “Stepping into Virtual Worlds” conference series, to be offered October 7th, 2008 in Second Life. Hundreds of people have attended this series, which began with “Stepping into History” in June and continued with “Stepping into Literature” in August. The series is sponsored by Alliance Library System and LearningTimes.
The day-long conference is open to the public, with more information available at http://www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org . It will take place entirely in the virtual world of Second Life.
During this conference, participants will make virtual “field trips” to some of the best and most creative locations that are using virtual worlds to promote health. During these field trips, they will be able to speak with those responsible for creating the simulations, and have time to explore them on their own. Among the field trips for this conference are Healthinfo Island, a health education simulation where visitors can test their knowledge of strokes by walking through a giant artery and destroying clots by correctly answering questions, and ToxTown, a typical American town where potentially dangerous chemicals can easily be seen.
In addition to the field trips, the conference includes:
· Keynote presentations by Randy Hinrichs, founder of 2B3D and developer of the “Medipelago,” a group of health related simulations in Second Life; and Ramesh Ramloll, creator of Play2Train, a virtual world simulator used to prepare healthcare professionals and others for crisis situations
· Table Talks on subjects such as “Healthcare Education and Advocacy in Virtual Worlds,” “Virtual World Health Librarianship” and “Using Virtual World for Training Medical Personnel.”
· A panel discussion, allowing participants to question and interact with a variety of experts in the use of virtual worlds in health and healthcare.
The cost for this day-long conference is $79, and participants may register for the conference at www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org
One of Second Life’s main strengths is as a collaborative meeting / conference platform so it’ll be interesting to see the outcomes of this conference as far as getting the word out about the potential of virtual worlds for health professionals.
I can quit anytime…
Posted on | September 9, 2008
One MMO player’s perspective on addiction. A worthwhile read - nothing new or groundbreaking but it at least engenders some self-examination. On key piece of social research in the future will be work days lost to MMO game playing.
I’m aware of a few people who’ve called in sick to play World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons Online - how about you?
Smoking cessation in Second Life
Posted on | September 7, 2008
Virtual Ability island continue their regular health-related events. This time, smoking cessation is the focus:
Moving toward wellness: Smoking Cessation
Tuesday, September 9
8:00 a.m. & 4:00 p.m. SLT
Virtual Ability Island
This workshop is funded by a grant from the National Library of Medicine, and supported by the Alliance Library System.
Nearly 8 years ago I finally did what I had been dreading for 29 years: I stopped smoking. The journey to cessation was amazing and life-altering, entailing lots of learning. I didn’t just learn about what smoking does to bodies, but about my own fears and anxieties around cessation, and how important a community of support is in change.
You could say that this class was more than 8 years in the making. I will be telling (briefly!) my own story, but also asking for your own experience. Without pressure, I’ll also share a few good resources so when you’re ready, you’ll know where to find good info on medications, community support, and more (and who knows, we may even begin our own smoking cessation support group).
Second Life is a community. Let’s come together for health!
Carolinal Keats, Coordinator Healthinfo Island
A community of support is certainly a predictor of success in smoking cessation, so such initiatives, if sustained, could deliver substantial benefits.
Healthcare giants: have clue, will build
Posted on | September 5, 2008
When it comes to the use of virtual environments, the healthcare industry is no less prone to fall into marketing pits of doom than any other industry. Static data, presented in a slap-dash fashion like posters on a wall. Huge, unused buildings that serve no particular purpose, and the occasional video. This seems to be the standard fare presented by companies and organisations coming into virtual environments who are not sensible about use of the medium. Often, these folk would have been better served by a well-organised Web page than the mish-mash they present within virtual environments. Indeed, their attempts are distinctly reminiscent of the early days of the Web, before people got a handle on that medium.
It’s not all bad, however. A couple of companies and organisations have produced useful and significant services that are appropriate for virtual environments. They have clearly thought about how best to discharge the services they already provide to demographics containing the folks they previously had a great deal of trouble reaching. People who use virtual environments, and who:
a) are unable or unwilling to leave their homes to obtain health information or care;
b) suffer from chronic illnesses that require some maintenance by the patient that can be bolstered by health information or care delivered online;
c) are young, not requiring specific healthcare, but can benefit from information delivery.
One of the best efforts open to the public eye is Palomar West hospital, a venture by Cisco, Palomar Pomerado Health, and metaverse developers Millions-of-us. The Second Life version of the hospital, built before the real version, is an exact model of what you can expect to see in San Diego in 2011, to the extent that several rooms are fully kitted-out with the sort of equipment that will fill the real thing. The Second Life exhibit is quite interactive, and provides an excellent idea of how things might operate in reality. Cisco Systems will power the real hospital. A central, internal network will be created to support the operation of the hospital, from patient locations via RFID tags, to room temperature and lighting via bedside screens, to the robotic technology that enables surgeons to operate remotely and automated systems for diagnostic work. Incidently, when we wandered past the site to take a closer look, a research study was being conducted. It’s good to know that this virtual environment replica is useful not only for future patients, and public healthcare at that level of education, but also for medical and other professionals.
Another ongoing project that has proved to be successful is one put on by the CDC in Whyville. Whyville is a virtual scientific learning environment for kids aged 8 to 15 years old. During the influenza season in the real world, Whyvillians are also placed at risk of developing the “Why-flu”, which causes sneezing and red spots on the avatar’s face. Not only were kids given the chance to have their avatar inoculated prior to the Why-flu season beginning, during the season those who caught the flu had a chance to buy remedies from the pharmacy, which were time-limited, and which came at a cost. During the second round of the project in 2007-2008, Whyvillians were encouraged to invite their grandparents to come and be virtually inoculated also. Thus information was disseminated across several generations online, and no doubt further than that offline, to other family members, and from there into the wider population.
This year the CDC has teamed up with CIGNA to produce a healthcare island in Second Life.
“About 90% of what we’re doing with chronic disease management involves behavior change. We could do more for our patients who have diabetes, weight problems or hypertension by helping them relieve their stress and achieve better mental health.” This is what they hope to cover in the virtual environment.
We are yet to experience the island for ourselves, however given the success of the Whyville project, it seems that the CDC have an excellent idea of what it takes to sell healthcare information to the younger generation; it will be interesting to see what tack they take for older folk. Most people like to take their medicinal information with a spoonful of sugar – experience will tell whether games will be the sweetener required, or whether talks and general social interaction are the preferential nectar.
Another site of note: the Second Health hospital or Polyclinic, Second Health London in Second Life. In a similar fashion to the West Palomar site (though in less detail), the Polyclinic displays a 3D representation as it might exist in real life. The establishment can be toured, though perhaps the machinima made at the site in Second Life, with accompanying information, is more enlightening. Though an entire medical campus has been built, with signs denoting the areas in which GPs and specialists will see patients, the acute care clinic and diagnostic facilities, none of the detail of equipment or functioning of the clinic has been created.
Yet another fantastic use of virtual environments is exemplified by the folk over at Play2Train. A town and two hospitals have been fitted out to enable “Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), Simple Triage Rapid Transportation (START), Risk Communication and Incident Command System (ICS) Training”.”Play2Train provides opportunities for training through interactive role playing.”
For a quick round up of other nifty virtual doings in healthcare, visit this link.
There is a vast diversity of healthcare information that needs to be delivered, both to professionals and to the general public. Virtual environments may only slowly be coming into their own in this realm, however, there is hope for them yet.
3-D healthcare learning environments: new research
Posted on | September 2, 2008
Margaret Hansen from the School of Nursing at the University of San Francisco has written a review for the Journal of Medical Internet Research entitled: “Versatile, Immersive, Creative and Dynamic Virtual 3-D Healthcare Learning Environments: A Review of the Literature”.
It’s a comprehensive overview of health research and education in virtual worlds. Current players are covered as well as discussion of the challenges and opportunities virtual worlds present for healthcare professionals.
Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory is an interesting basis for part of the discussion and it encapsulates the challenges in arguing for virtual worlds as an education tool - complexity and compatability are two barriers to adoption cited by the theory and they are two critical challenges for virtual worlds as well.
As Hansen argues, until there’s significant empirical support for the tool it will be difficult to garner widespread acceptance of it. What’s encouraging though is the growing body of work looking at the issue and Hansen gives a hat-tip to the University of Technology Sydney for their support - collaboration is gaining momentum and it can only assist the quest for an empirical basis for virtual worlds healthcare education.
Thanks to Maged Boulos for the heads-up on this.
Virtual Ability Island
Posted on | August 23, 2008
Virtual Ability is an island in Second Life devoted to individuals with disabilities or chronic health conditions.
Initially funded by the USA’s National Library of Medicine, it now relies on individual contributions. It contains a number of discrete areas including training facilities for people with chronic health conditions. They even have their own orientation section which is well laid out and easy to follow.
You can contact Carolina Keats or Eme Capalini in-world for more information.
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