A systems approach to healthcare: agent-based modeling, community mental health, and population well-being.

Purpose: Explore whether agent-based modeling and simulation can help healthcare administrators discover interventions that increase population wellness and quality of care while, simultaneously, decreasing costs. Since important dynamics often lie in the social determinants outside the health facilities that provide services, this study thus models the problem at three levels (individuals, organizations, and society).

Methods: The study explores the utility of translating an existing (prize winning) software for modeling complex societal systems and agent's daily life activities (like a Sim City style of software), into a desired decision support system.

Computer games may be good for your health: shifting healthcare behavior via interactive drama videogames.

There is increasing evidence that interactive learning systems have an important role in reducing health risks and improving general health status. This theater style demonstration is aimed at harnessing people's passions for videogames and the movies, and a major purpose of this research is to explore alternative ways for a game generator to help authors to introduce entertainment and free play as well as learning by teaching into role playing games and interactive dramas that are behavioral interventions in disguise.

Computer games may be good for your health.

Computer-based games and interactive simulators have matured to the point where they can have a significant impact on healthcare behavior decisions. Initial results from using one such game (Heart Sense) indicate that it can improve recognition of heart attack symptoms and shift behavioral issues so as to reduce pre-hospitalization delay in seeking treatment--thereby reducing myocardial infarction mortality and morbidity.