Image
credit: David Wortley’s Virtual Roundtables using a new virtual networking
platform called Remo
David Wortley, Vice President of the International
Society of Digital Medicine (ISDM), has been leading weekly webinars and
virtual roundtables to bring together digital health researchers and practitioners
and build a collaborative game-based platform.
Founding
Director of the Serious Games Institute (SGI) at Coventry University and later
on of GAETSS, David early recognized that the behavioral psychology behind Serious
Games was at least as important as their enabling technologies, and that would
make game-based processes a power for disruptive change.
The International Society of Digital Medicine (ISDM) was launched in China in 2016 as a global initiative to promote and share best practices in digital health. In the 4 years since its foundation, there has been a noticeable trend towards digital technologies becoming more and more important as clinical therapies in addition to their uses for clinical diagnostics.
It is against this background and the sudden disruptive impact of COVID-19, that the European Chapter of ISDM began supplementing and enhancing its knowledge sharing beyond the Digital Medicine Journal and bi-annual conferences into an ongoing online program.
To facilitate this collaboration among digital health researchers and practitioners, 3 different contexts have been used since the virtual program launch in April 2020:
The International Society of Digital Medicine (ISDM) was launched in China in 2016 as a global initiative to promote and share best practices in digital health. In the 4 years since its foundation, there has been a noticeable trend towards digital technologies becoming more and more important as clinical therapies in addition to their uses for clinical diagnostics.
It is against this background and the sudden disruptive impact of COVID-19, that the European Chapter of ISDM began supplementing and enhancing its knowledge sharing beyond the Digital Medicine Journal and bi-annual conferences into an ongoing online program.
To facilitate this collaboration among digital health researchers and practitioners, 3 different contexts have been used since the virtual program launch in April 2020:
1)Zoom Webinars at http://www.isdm.eu/isdmwebinars.html, which include
not only recordings of live webinars featuring expert panel discussions, but
also individual interviews with digital health experts across many disciplines
and technologies.
2) Remo Virtual Networking, virtual
roundtables using an innovative platform that provides participants with an
opportunity to network and form collaborative relationships with international
partners.

Image
credit: David Wortley’s Coronavirus Game Challenge
“The enabling technologies used to create these types of Serious Games
are affordable, accessible and easy enough to use in the hands of subject matter
experts,” says David Wortley. “They make the creation of new highly targeted
medical Serious Games very quick and cost effective,” adds David.
A prime example of such a digital medicine game aimed at coronavirus
education has been developed for the Asian audience and is accessible online at
https://www.360in360ix.co.uk/sgacoronavirusdemo/. This Serious
Game is a demonstrator prototype game incorporating and showcasing some key
elements of game-based education to influence lifestyle behaviors which protect
citizens against coronavirus.
“These new powerful Serious Games development tools based on real-world
environments can also be delivered across multiple platforms including laptops,
smartphones and VR headsets in both online and off-line formats,” states David.
“They can even be integrated into Learning Management Systems with very
granular analytics to support learning and development professionals,” he
concludes.
A recording of the webinar which focuses on the creation and
demonstration of this game is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJyRGt4KEig