Mitsuhiro Ogawa

Mitsuhiro Ogawa is an associate professor of faculty of science and engineering, Teikyo University, Japan. He was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1968. He received his BS and MS degrees in Engineering from Waseda University, Japan, in 1992 and 1994, respectively. He received a PhD degree in Medicine from Tokyo Dental and Medical University, Japan, in 1998. Since 2012, he has been in faculty of science and engineering, Teikyo University. He is a member of IEEE, Japanese Society for Medical Engineering (JSMBE) and DiGRA JAPAN. His current research area is in biomedical engineering including physiological measurement, game science including player analysis by using physiological measurement, serious games and gamification.

PRESENTATION 2018

A proposal of a novel future outlook of healthcare with digital gaming; “incorporating physiological measurement with gaming.”
Physiological measurements can be considered as tools for medicine and/or health maintenance. Particularly for the short term, the acute stage of diseases might be detected through physiological measurements. In addition to these established methods of short-term measurement that mainly have been used in hospital, long-term physiological measurements such as weight scales and home-use blood pressure monitors which provide chronological health information, have been considered as promising methods for maintaining health. The usefulness of long-term measurement has been proven by several cohort studies rerating healthcare. However, sometimes, continuous long-term measurement is difficult for individuals without considerable intervention from medical doctors. In most cases, getting habituated to self-measurement depends on a subject’s motivation.

Based on this discussion, we have combined physiological measurements during game playing and physiological measurements, then, developed sensors/monitors embedded within game devices. We propose a novel significance of digital games based on this combination to establish a new method of self-health maintenance. We’ve considered that if physiological measurements could be possible during game playing, the groups of people who play games daily, i.e., the so-called “gamers,” would be automatically measured, then, a large amount of physiological data could be automatically and easily obtained from the “gamers.” If this would be possible, the “gamers” could maintain their health status more easily compared to other “ordinary” people who don’t play games frequently. We refer to this paradoxical future outlook as “incorporating physiological measurement with gaming” and believe that this can be a possible health management method in the near future.