The ABCs of Why GFH Matters

In our last post, we talked about the merits of the recently concluded Games For Health conference, which was held in Baltimore earlier this year. GFH is a great event that brings together a wide range of people involved in health care –- from researchers and academics to medical professionals, reps from pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, and government officials –- to meet with game developers and share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health, health care and policy.

For this post, we want to drill down to some of the specific reasons that highlight why we think GFH matters and, more important, why you should think first before missing next year’s conference:

• For starters, the leading minds in the health care arena think GFH matters -– and can make a difference in the way people learn, work, and live. At this year’s conference it was announced that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) chipped in $8.25 million in late 2007 to launch the Health Games Research, a new national program to support research to enhance the quality and effectiveness of interactive games that are used to improve health. Although RWJF supports ongoing research to forge connections between the games and health fields, this grant represents a significant new investment to advance the health-related impact of games by RWJF’s Pioneer Portfolio, which made an initial grant in 2005 to the Games for Health Project, whose work to connect game industry leaders with scholars and health experts heightened interest in the potential for this field to positively influence health.

• But don’t take our word on the matter: Listen to Ben Sawyer, Serious Games guru and founder of the GFH movement, and Chinwe Onyekere, RWJF program officer, discuss the growth of the games for health field and why they think large-scale funding like this is critical to supporting the effort to bring new ideas and innovation to health and health care – such as the use of video games for rehab and therapy or for training medical providers and first responders plan for natural disasters – through research and events, like the GFH conference: http://www.hastingsgroupmedia.com/GolinHarris/050808GamesforHealth.wma
  

In the next post, we’ll highlight some of the other information we found, along with technology breakthroughs that occurred at GFH, that we think could make a difference to you and your organization.