Good morning Judith,

I would like to introduce to you Lise Worthen-Chaudhari a research assistant professor of Ohio State University. She has recently (September 2013) started her research on SuperBetter. As a member of the Ohio State Universities Wexner Medical Center she is part of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department. One of the topics she works on is: Traumatic Brain Injury.

Sounds impressive doesn’t it 😉 It is! Especially because she has got the opportunity to conduct a research on SuperBetter. Her reseach is titled: Clinical Trial of a Rehabilitation Game – SuperBetter. In her research overview as printed on clinicaltrials.gov she describes that within the field of rehabilitation the patients are faced by life changing challenges on different types: behavioral, cognitive, emotional and physical. In order to help patients to make the transition from institutionalized care into self care, she hopes that multiplayer gaming paradigms can be utilized. She believes that research should be conducted on this field because:

1. Games can bring the power of social networking (doing it together) and alternate reality (doing it in a more inspiring environment)
2. Games can help in quantifying the performance of the rehabilitation process. She connects that towards clinical relevant documentation (caretaker oriented), but I also believe that the quantification of performance and the visualization of it can be an inspiration to the patient.
3. Games are played a lot by our youth, and that clinics should be prepared on the big group of youngsters that have a lot of game experience and therefore can benefit from another approach. I believe that also the elderly are more and more embedded within gaming worlds.
4. Games that are affordable are a good cost-effective alternative for current medical protocols.

She is going to research SuperBetter by getting a group of 15-25 year olds with concussion, mild traumatic brain or moderate brain injury to play the game for 6 weeks. Every week they play 10 minutes a day. All of the patients do need at least one 18+ support giver. I hope that she leaves the opportunity for patients to add more than one support giver, because in the keynote that Jane gave at the Educause, she stated that you should have at least 2 people around you that help you to make a real difference.

Her primary question is if playing the game is enhancing or hindering the community participation. The secondary question is the quality of life of both the patient and the supporter. This only is the first phase in a research that should eventually lead to a random clinical control trial. I can’t wait for (preliminary) results and publications.

I’ll keep you posted as soon as I hear/see something.

Greets Marcel