Dr. Eric B. Bauman introduces Game-Based Learning to the International Dialysis Conference

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Photo by Abe Megahed

Clinical Playground’s founder and managing member Dr. Eric B. Bauman was in Seattle on March 11th for the 2013 International Dialysis conference, where he provided a plenary session titled Apps & Games for Clinical and Patient Education: Mechanism for Behavioral Change.  Mobile applications, video games, and virtual environments are increasingly being integrated into clinical and continuing education curricula.  Using mobile applications and games for patient education remain an under-leveraged, yet promising possibility for facilitating behavioral change.  Traditional didactic strategies for patient education remain largely ineffective.  This is of particular concern when it comes to dialysis care and kidney disease because behavioral change, the types of decisions patients make in terms of diet, and adherence to treatment plans could have huge effects on mortality and morbidity.

Using innovative strategies like game-based learning may be seen as innovative and engaging by patients.  Further, game-based learning, including mobile technology may provide interesting and novel ways to map behavioral change to quantitative data related to disease process.

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Eric B. Bauman in Seattle

Mobile applications and video games often have built in scoring matrices that can document player/patient success in various targeted domains. These matrices make them particularly interesting research tools and mechanisms for mapping behavior to tangible data like diagnostic laboratory findings.