The winner of the first Future of Health Award is Heartville!!

On April 2nd 2012 TEDxMaastricht took place with the very well matching theme ‘The Future of Health’. Here the public could vote for one of the 5 nominees mentioned below. These votes were combined with the jury decision, which resulted in a verdict of the winning game idea.

The official press release is available here.

During TEDxMaastricht Joep de Groot (CZ health insurance) was interviewed on their collaboration with TEDxMaastricht and Games for Health Europe. He explains why CZ decided to support the Future of Health Award. Find this video here, as well as the video of the on-stage announcement of ‘Heartville’ as winner of the award.

Congrats to the Heartville team at QLVR on behalf of everyone involved with the Future of Health Award!

Abstracts of the five nominated ideas (random order):

1. HeartVille (Jaap Gerretsen) 
2. DayDream (Jan Jonk)
3. Chain of Foods (Diane Tucker)
4. FigureRunning (Willempje Vrins & Leonieke Verhoog)
5. Game Domestic Violence (Jan de Werd)
   

2011:

The Future of Health Award challenge gave anyone with an innovative idea for gaming in health a chance to get their idea actually developed for up to €200.000!

As we announced during the Games for Health Europe conference on Tuesday October 25th, we were overwhelmed by the number of registrations to pitch for the Future of Health Award.

Because we wanted to make sure each of your ideas got the attention it deserved, it was decided to give the jury a bit more time to judge all the pitches. Out of 75 registrations to pitch for the Future of Health Award, 68 of you had the pitch of their innovative health idea filmed and evaluated by a jury.

Jury report:

68 people pitched their idea for a health (care) related game during the Games for Health Europe conference. We would like to thank all contributors for their effort! The overwhelming amount of pitches was a big surprise for the organisation and the jury. It was a tremendous task to judge them and to select ‘only’ five nominees. But, after 5 hours of watching the pitches, a multiple amount of time judging and three rounds of selection and voting, we are honoured to present the five nominees for the Future of Health Award.

And the nominees are… (in alphabetical order):

• Jaap Gerretsen: HeartVille
• Jan Jonk: DayDream
• Diane Tucker: Chain of Foods
• Willempje Vrins & Leonieke Verhoog: FigureRunning
• Jan de Werd: Game Domestic Violence

Jury comments:

• – Heartville:

A very well designed idea. It combines lifestyle and mental health and is expandable to broader groups. We love the idea to embed this game in a care group. Interesting that it uses a proven concept.

• – Daydream:

Many studies focus on how people with disabilities can find pleasure in virtual environment, but it isn’t easy to arrange this technically. A different, more customizable solution like Daydream would be great! This creative and innovative concept uses innovative technology (biofeedback by brain computer interface). Although the target group is relatively small (paralyzed people), the concept has the potential to be broadened. There are not many examples for solutions like this in this field.

• – Chain of Foods:

The topic obesity is very relevant today. According to the jury, gaming can be a great way to emphasize the importance of healthy nutrition. This idea is well designed and has a good and innovative game concept. There is definitely a market for such a game.

• – Figurerunning:

Even though the idea for this game is not new, the way these two runner geeks organized a community around this idea is wonderful. It created great social involvement and the execution is creative. With some help, Figurerunning has the potential to become a real social community or even movement – a Figure movement. The idea has the potential for reaching a broad target group with more applications possible.

• – Game Domestic Violence:

This game reaches an important but forgotten target group. At the moment the idea is in a premature stage, but it is fully supported and put on the agenda with a passionate and authentic pitch. Even though it’s hard to link the fight against domestic violence to a game, the jury is convinced that a game could make a positive contribution to the subject.

All nominees have been informed that they are nominated. This nomination is final and is non disputable.

In April 2012 during TEDxMaastricht, the winning idea for the Future of Health Award will be chosen. This winning idea will be developed for up to €200.000, sponsored by CZ Zorgverzekeraar.

To all of you who were not nominated: We want to thank you for your time, enthusiasm and the many great ideas you all have. It was exciting to see the eagerness and motivation to improve, change and upgrade healthcare. We are sure that many of you will find ways to implement your idea in some way or another.

The jury

1. Ben Schouten: Chairman of the jury. He studied fine arts at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and still works as an artist/designer. During his activities as an artist, he started to study mathematics, after which he completed a PhD research on visual information retrieval and interfaces. His thesis won a Bronze World Medal for Design in the category Information and Education at the New York Arts Festival, as well as a Webby Award in gaming. Since January 1th, 2010 he is Professor Playful Interactions at the faculty of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven School of Technology, as well as Lector Serious Game Design at Fontys University of Applied Sciences. He is an expert for the European Committee on the Internet of Things and an advisor of the Dutch Cultural Media Fund.
2. Bertalan Mesko: He graduated from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science center in 2009 and started PhD in the field of clinical genomics. He is the managing director and founder of Webicina.com LLC, the first free medical social media guidance service for patients and medical professionals. He speaks at prestigious conferences; covers online international events and is a health 2.0 consultant for pharma and medical companies. Healthspottr.com included him in the Future Health Top 100 list. He is the author of the award-winning medical blog, Scienceroll.com and the educator of the Medicine and Web 2.0 university credit course which is the first of its kind worldwide.
3. Emily Treat: She graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center in 2006 and earned her BA in Fine Arts and Cultural History. She has an extensive background as a producer and designer of educational games. She began at Leapfrog where she worked on a range of e-learning platforms and products for children and teens. Since then, she has worked as coordinator of the Scratch software and online community at the MIT Media Lab, produced learning games for 360KID, and worked in Kaplan Inc’s international office in London as lead designer and producer of an expansive online virtual world for language learning. Along the way, she has also spent time volunteering as a game design instructor in youth after school and community programs.
4. Luciën Engelen: He has been working at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre since 2007 as head of the regional acute healthcare network. He also advises the board in terms of changes in healthcare enhancing the participation of the patients and their informal care in their own disease, working towards Participatory Healthcare. He is initiator and leader of the Radboud REshape & Innovation Center, that makes and takes healthcare innovations fast paced into practice, or concludes them as (for the moment) not implementable. He initiated the movement Compassion for Care, together with students of the IFSMA and is founder and curator of TedXMaastricht, which took place April 4th 2011 themed ‘the Future of Health’.
5. Bart Bandenburg: He has over 25 years of experience as a clinician and researcher in hospital and primary healthcare. At present, he is CMO at Medicinfo, a Dutch healthcare innovation company in Tilburg, and has specialized in e-health. He is in charge of Medicinfo’s knowledge center that cooperates with national and international academic institutions. Mr. Brandenburg participates in the Center for eHealth Research at the University of Twente. He is a member of the Social Media Working Group of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). With two colleagues, he is cofounder of @tweetspreekuur, a free primary care service via Twitter. In 2010, this activity won him the Medicine 2.0 Maastricht Award.

Jurriaan van Rijswijk is the process coordinator of the jury without any involvement in voting for the winning game.  Jeroen van Mastrigt-Ide is involved in the jury process as a reference point and walking encyclopaedia on applied games and game design for all jury members and has no involvement in the voting for the winning game.