SimBody

2011

Many of the top causes of the death in the world are directly related to risk factors that can be avoided with changes in lifestyle behaviors. In Portugal, cardiovascular diseases are responsible for about 39% of the lost lives. It is clear that the current health education media is not enough. Computers with internet access are now widely available and their multimedia capabilities show great potential for e-learning applications. Furthermore, most of the frequent internet users already use their computer to look for health related information. This project aims to capitalize on this interest, building an interactive simulator that educates people on how to mitigate the risk of cardiovascular diseases. The application was named SimBody and is available for the web. It allows users to control the behaviors of an avatar in a simulation that starts from a custom profile. Besides showing the influence of each parameter in the risk, SimBody offers contextualized lifestyle advices and de...

Journal of clinical nursing, 2018

To develop and evaluate an interactive, avatar-based education application, for improving patients' knowledge of, and response to, acute coronary syndrome (ACS) symptoms. A patient's ability to recognise and respond to the symptoms of ACS is imperative for seeking timely medical intervention. Innovative patient education interventions are needed to support patient education and patient self-care. Participatory action research methods were used to engage consumers with cardiac and information technology (IT) experts to develop an avatar-based education application. The avatar-based education application was developed according to evidence-based guidelines. The effect on ACS knowledge was evaluated in a group of ten patients with ACS. In total, 10 consumers with ACS and 12 cardiovascular clinical and IT experts participated in the designing and development of the education application. An additional 10 consumers (mean age was 52.2 ± 10.4 years) were recruited for testing the f...

Biomedical engineering online, 2014

There is an established tradition of cardiovascular simulation tools, but the application of this kind of technology in the e-Learning arena is a novel approach. This paper presents an e-Learning environment aimed at teaching the interaction of cardiovascular and lung systems to health-care professionals. Heart-lung interaction must be analyzed while assisting patients with severe respiratory problems or with heart failure in intensive care unit. Such patients can be assisted by mechanical ventilatory assistance or by thoracic artificial lung."In silico" cardiovascular simulator was experimented during a training course given to graduate students of the School of Specialization in Cardiology at 'Sapienza' University in Rome.The training course employed CARDIOSIM©: a numerical simulator of the cardiovascular system. Such simulator is able to reproduce pathophysiological conditions of patients affected by cardiovascular and/or lung disease. In order to study the inte...

International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2018

Cardiovascular diseases are one of major cause of death in the world, as well as in Indonesia. In spite of that fact, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) could be prevented with healthy behavior and lifestyle, such as: regular health checkup , healthy eating and drinking lifestyle, stress management, sleeping management, regular physical activities. In this paper, we develop mobile health application as a tool to record daily behavior and lifestyle. Mobile health is chosen because nowadays mobile devices are the most popular communication used among people. Thus, we believe that mobile Health (mHealth) is a promising tool to promote healthy lifestyle and behavior. The method we used for developing the application is called as Human-centered design (HCD). The application is evaluated iteratively from the first prototype (low-fidelity prototype) to the final prototype (high-fidelity prototype). Based on the feedback using User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) shows that the application has above average scores for all of the components, i.e.: attractiveness, clarity, efficiency, accuracy and dependability, stimulation, and novelty. The best score is for Stimulation (Excellent), while the worst score is accuracy and dependability (above average). This shows that mHealth is a potential tool to stimulate users for having healthy lifestyle, however it still required further validation of use from health experts to ensure the accuracy's result of the application.

The Digital Patient: Advancing Healthcare, Research, and Education , 2015

This chapter reviews the past and current trends of one particularly intriguing aspect of virtual worlds—virtual representations commonly known as avatars—in the context of health behavior change. Despite the growing interest in the influence of virtual representations on health behaviors, there has been a surprising dearth of research exploring the use of virtual representations as a direct and central vehicle of behavior change. State-of-the-art findings on the use of virtual representations to promote behavior change will be discussed first, followed by a more detailed discussion of recent studies that specifically target health behavior change using virtual representations.

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Applied Engineering, ICAE 2022, 5 October 2022, Batam, Indonesia

A healthy lifestyle at home is very important to implement; some families do not apply health or clean living rules at home. Nowadays, there are problems that can be explained with technology; one of them is by providing content with a realistic visual concept called Virtual Reality (VR). VR technology is also used in several fields, such as in the field of gaming, health simulation, simulation in the field of education and others. For this reason, the author decided to analyze applications that aim to educate based on virtual reality about the rules of healthy lifestyle at home. The author wants to know the level of user experience of healthy living applications at home. For method of user experience or the experience of this user itself the author decides to use the TCSD (Task Centered System) method. TCSD is a method that is included in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This method has four stages, namely Identification, User Centered Requirements Analysis, Design through Scenario and System Evaluation. System. And at the final stage of the TCSD method is the walktrough evaluate stage. Evaluate which will be done to evaluate user usability. Evaluation is done with one of the usability methods, namely heuristic evaluation. From the results obtained from research analysis and testing about the healthy living simulation application at home as an application that educates about the importance of healthy living at home. With the method of heuristic calculation method, an average value of 0.81 has been obtained with a severy rating "Cosmetic" which means there are problems but the problem is not too important to fix. And it can be concluded that healthy living simulation application at home can be accepted with low usability problems. usability problems are low.

National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2004

This paper describes a game-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that engages learners in interactive role-play as a form of indirect health communication about lifestyle risks. Successful instruction must not only inform patients of correlations and risks but also equip them to overcome well-known cognitive obstacles to wise lifestyle choices. Through the game, HEDONIST, we mean to address these sub-rational decision processes that are inaccessible to conventional didactic instruction methods. This is an experiment in capturing the pedagogical value of experiential learning, especially cognitive dissonance, learning by teaching others, and the social support value of ad hoc social networks that form spontaneously inside the game and persist outside. For instance, to excel in the game HEDONIST the player must use dialog to persuade Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to modify their simple decision functions by 'teaching' them about the consequences of substance abuse, unsafe sex, eating disorders, smoking, etc. The ITS integrates the commercial game engine NeverWinterNights™ with intelligent dialog and instructional components that convert 3D graphical game engine characters into intelligent dialog agents. The focus of this paper is the reusable dialog agent architecture and its interface to the backend game-engine system. Motivation The health communication task that motivates this project concerns high-risk lifestyle choices-substance abuse, gambling, tobacco consumption, dangerous sexual practices, binge drinking, DUI, obesity, overextended credit, and unnecessary sports injuries. Unwise choices are prevalent in spite of nearly universal awareness of the cause-effect relationships between, say, smoking and lung cancer, obesity and diabetes, unsafe sex and HIV. A partial explanation is the difficulty humans have evaluating probability ratios; we are easily thrown off by framing effects (Tversky, et al., 1974) and subconscious "cognitive illusions"(Piattelli-Palmarini, 1994) that undermine rational decision-making about gambles. Added blame goes to seductive messages carefully designed to exploit these cognitive deficiencies. The problem is still further exacerbated in high-stress environments with stretches of idle time that tend to inspire risk-seeking behavior especially in young people. So to be successful, health communication must not only inform patients of correlations, likelihoods, and consequences but also equip them to overcome cognitive obstacles to wise lifestyle choices. Simulation-based training systems have been successfully applied to a range of instructional goals. Mannequin simulations of trauma patients train casualty care physicians in perceptual-motor skills, rapid situation assessment under stress, and unambiguous human communication often over low-bandwidth, high-noise telemedicine channels. Other simulation-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) convey procedural knowledge or 'soft' cognitive skills required for diagnosis and treatment decisions. The lifestyle decision-making skills that are the focus of this project call for a third genre of instructional system designed to convert inert knowledge about causeeffect relations into actively usable awareness.

American Journal of Health Promotion, 2010

Traditionally, health promotion practice has relied on print and popular media for information dissemination. However, technology sprawl has challenged this tradition, and progressive health promotion professionals are integrating email, text messaging. Web sites, and online support groups into their repertoire.' A less familiar, yet attractive, platform for health promotion specialists is the virtual world. An online virtual world is "an interactive computer simulation which allows participants to see, hear, use, and modify simulated objects in a computer-created world."^*P '''^' Virtual worlds can be designed for single participants; simultaneous participants; or multiple groups of users, referred to as a virtual community.•'' We explore the possibilities of using virtual worlds to broaden the reach and scope for health promotion.

Journal of advanced nursing, 2018

To evaluate the effectiveness of an interactive, avatar-based education application to improve knowledge of and response to heart attack symptoms in people who are at risk of a heart attack. Poor knowledge of heart attack symptoms is recognized as a significant barrier to timely medical treatment. Numerous studies have demonstrated that technology can assist in patient education to improve knowledge and self-care. A single-center, non-blinded, two parallel groups, pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Seventy patients will be recruited from the coronary care unit of a public hospital. Eligible participants will be randomized to either the usual care or the intervention group (usual care plus avatar-based heart attack education app). The primary outcome of this study is knowledge. Secondary outcomes include response to heart attack symptoms, health service use and satisfaction. Study participants will be followed up for 6 months. This study will evaluate the avatar-based education a...

Transformative Healthcare Practice through Patient Engagement

Recent literature shows that new technologies can be used to promote patient engagement. The present contribution focuses on Virtual Worlds (VWs), namely virtual environments that multiple users can experience together thanks to the use of avatars. Indeed, VWs offer interesting opportunities for patient engagement interventions on two levels. On the individual level, customized avatars are known to have relationships with users' inner experience and Self-conception, so that they may constitute a peculiar additional tool for psychological assessment. Moreover, they are able to promote healthy behaviors thanks to a strong vicarious reinforcement (Proteus effect). On the collective level, VWs constitute an ideal platform to support the emergence of collective flow states (Networked Flow) which are related to the patients' creative activity and well-being. The present contribution deepens these phenomena, presenting VWs as an innovative and interesting tool for the patient engag...