Los juegos aplicados en salud educan, entretienen y favorecen un mejor acceso de los usuarios al mundo sanitario en todas sus vertientes. Además, para este sector suponen una oportunidad sin precedentes en lo relativo a la motivación y el cambio de conducta de las personas en relación a sus enfermedades y dolencias. Estos juegos se diseñan para promover mejores resultados en la salud de los pacientes, para mejorar la formación de los profesionales implicados y promover la educación al servicio de la salud. La industria del juego aplicado en salud está valorada en miles de millones de euros y dispone de centenares de productos y prototipos que se han diseñado desde los ámbitos académico y comercial. Este libro analiza las mejoras en el sector y nos proporciona un marco de evaluación, diseño y estrategia que además quiere ser sostenible.

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Serious games for health educate, entertain and improve access to healthcare services. In addition, they represent an unprecedented opportunity to motivate and change people's behavior in relation to their illnesses and conditions. These games are designed to promote better health outcomes for patients, and also to improve the training of the professionals involved in promoting education and health services. The health gaming industry is valued at billions of euros and has hundreds of products and prototypes that have been designed from the academic and commercial fields. This book analyzes the improvements in the sector and provides us with an evaluation, design and strategy framework for sustainable systems

In 2006, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, Tennessee) began developing a school-based outreach program known as the St. Jude Cancer Education for Children Program (SJCECP). The aim of this program is to teach Memphis-area children about cells, cancer, and healthy habits that can prevent the development of cancer in adulthood. Initial plans for delivery of the program was for St. Jude staff to present the program at local schools. This plan for disseminating instruction was not feasible due to the limited availability of St. Jude staff. As a next step, during the 2012–2014 academic years, we conducted a study entitled SJCECP2, utilizing the SJCECP curriculum, with the objective of evaluating the impact of the educational intervention on knowledge acquisition and retention among fourth-grade students participating in a modified, teacher-led version of the program. Eighteen teachers and 426 students from 10 local schools in the greater Memphis area participated in the program evaluation. This study used a single-group, pre-test/post-test design to determine the impact of the SJCECP intervention on changes in knowledge scores among fourth-grade students. Testing was on cells, cancer, and healthy living. The mean scores increased from 6.45 to 8.12, 5.99 to 7.65, and 5.92 to 7.96 on cell, cancer, and health behaviors units, respectively (all p values <.001). Preliminary evidence suggests that the SJCECP2 intervention is a useful tool for teachers to improve student knowledge of knowledge of cells, cancer, and healthy living concepts at the fourth-grade level.

PubMed: 26939672

People-centered health care seeks an active role for the patient while empowering all other members of the health care team. By promoting greater patient responsibility and optimal usage, patient-centered health care leads to improved health outcomes, quality of life and optimal value for health care investment. This paper reviews some definitions of people-centered health care and various e-health approaches around the world used to implement this vision. The barriers and enablers to implementation this type of approach are explored. This paper provides a proposed research agenda for future implementations of people-centered e-health.

PubMed PMID: 26262279

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PubMed PMID: 26798845; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4717481.

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The Pediatric Oncology Network Database, (www.pond4kids.org, POND), is a secure, web-based, multilingual pediatric hematology/oncology database created for use in countries with limited resources to meet various clinical data management needs including cancer registration, delivery of protocol-based care, outcome evaluation, and assessment of psychosocial support programs. Established as a part of the International Outreach Program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, POND serves as a tool for oncology units to store patient data for easy retrieval and analysis and to achieve uniform data collection to facilitate meaningful comparison of information among centers. Launched in 2003, POND now has 233 sites registered with over 1,000 users in 66 countries. However, adoption and usage of POND varies widely among sites. This paper reviews some of the challenges to developing a global collaborative clinical platform based on the experiences of developing POND. The paper also presents a case study of POND use in Guatemala, where the Guatemalan National Oncology Unit (UNOP) has developed extensive internal and external global collaborations using POND.

PMID:  23388293

Over half the deaths from disease in the world are now due to just four chronic conditions – diabetes, lung diseases, some cancers and heart disease. Health and education are inextricably linked. Developing and delivering effective, scalable and sustainable education programs which lead to real behavioral change would influence some of the common risk factors for these diseases, such as smoking, poor diet and lack of physical activity.  This book contains the selected papers from the St. Jude Cure4Kids Global Summit, held in June, 2011 at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. The aim of this three-day conference was to improve health and science education in classrooms and communities around the world. Leading educators, innovators and pioneers in the field of public health came together in a multidisciplinary forum to explore examples of successful education programs, analyze the challenges in designing effective, scalable and cost-efficient public health education programs and identify strategies, methodologies and incentives for developing future programs capable of yielding large-scale improvements in health outcomes for diverse communities.  The papers presented here provide a foundation in the key topics necessary to create future innovative health promotion programs, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves improving health outcomes by means of better and more effective health education.

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People-centered health care systems aim to empower people with their health care decisions, make information more accessible, and enable more autonomy. The goal is to promote well-being as much as to treat disease, and to create more collaboration between providers, patients, and their families, thus reducing costs and improving health outcomes. Throughout the world growing populations and rising costs are challenging health care systems. In numerous countries, health care providers are unable to meet the needs of many individuals and groups due to limited budgets, time, and staff. An aging population and rapidly increasing rates of chronic diseases could overwhelm most health care systems. While information and communication technologies can connect health care providers with each other and the consumers they serve, there is no group, organization, or government that has successfully overcome the roadblocks to implementing a wide people-centered health system. Ideally, such a system would put the needs of the public first, enable individuals to take greater responsibility for managing their own health and health services, and promote optimal levels of health and resource utilization. In this paper, we explore a vision for future people-centered health care systems that could provide better access to information and decision-making tools for patients, health care providers, and the general public. We also examine key challenges to creating such systems.