Immersive gaming and pain management
Yesterday I had an interesting meeting with a nurse from UW Hospital who works in pain management. She saw an article on my department's sims/games program and contacted the writer who pointed her to me. I normally work with instructional or research application of simulations and games in higher education, but as you'll read below, I thought this was a worthwhile cause to provide some help to.

Her specific application is the use of immersive games or simulations with patients with severe burns. Dressing changes are incredibly painful for these patients and they can use only so much medicine. I have not read all the articles she forwarded to me, but the theory is that providing alternate inputs for the senses helps reduce the pain of dressing changes. One study showed that using a virtual reality head-set (like these: http://www.stereo3d.com/hmd.htm#chart) was far more effective at reducing pain than having a patient play a game on a regular television.

She inherited some equipment and software from a previous program. Their unit does not have a lot of technical support capable of maintaining or upgrading their equipment so she contacted me. She both wants help getting their current set-up working and she wants advice on other potential technologies, games or simulations she could try. Patients vary in age range and game playing experience so I'm inclined to recommend more casual games. I initially thought of the Nintendo Wii, but she pointed out that you need a wide range of motion to play the Wii. Her patients typically have restricted motion and are laying on a bed. My experience is that you don't really need to do the wild arm waving that you see people often do with the Wii, but I wanted to take that into account.

Do you have any thoughts or advice for me? What casual, accessible game might you recommend she and her patients try? It doesn't have to be a high-end virtual reality game. Regular consoles can make use of the head-sets as well - they just aren't "3d." I'm also looking to collect a list of Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation, or PC games that might be easy and accessible for virtually any user. Some potential examples:

- Nintendo Wii Big Brain Academy
- A bunch of Wii games are listed here: <http://2aday.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/nintendo-wii-the-bundles-best-casual-games-reviews/>
- Xbox 360: Scene It
- Xbox Live arcade games (Bejeweled, etc.)