Serious Games for Healthcare: Applications and Implications will introduce the development and application of game technologies for health-related serious games. Further, it provides cutting-edge academic research and industry updates which will inform readers about the current and future advances in the area. Encapsulating the knowledge of commercial and noncommercial researchers, developers, and practitioners in a single volume will benefit not only the research and development community within this field, but could also serve public health interests by improving awareness and outcomes.
Ian Dunwell (BSc, MSc, PhD, ARCS) is currently a Senior Researcher at Coventry University's Serious Games Institute, where he recently led the final evaluation report for the UK Department for Transport's £2.5m Code of Everand, a serious game aimed at encouraging children to put learnt principles of safe crossing into regular practice. He has worked in intersectoral and international contexts across a wide range of European projects, including the FP7-funded ALICE, e-VITA, mEducator, and the Games and Learning Alliance (GaLA) Network of Excellence, as well as the forthcoming 3m MASELTOV project, which seeks to develop new methods of supporting migrant workers through technology. His research interests include integrating web semantics with game-based learning environments, as well as the application of robust evaluation methodologies and methods for effectively feeding back this research into design. Recent collaborations include acting as Director of Studies on PhD studentships addressing topics such as Avatars as Vehicle Interfaces (funded by Jaguar Land Rover Ltd.) and Internet Metadata as Embedded Game Content (joint funded by the UK EPSRC and PlayGen Ltd.), as well as consulting on steering committees for games addressing topics such as childhood obesity, triage response, sexual health, and infection control.
Kurt Debattista is an Assistant Professor at the International Digital Laboratory. Prior to this, he worked as a Research Associate on EPSRC grant EP/D069874/1 at the University of Bristol and as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Malta. He has a PhD in Computer Science in selective rendering from the University of Bristol and an MSc (distinction) by research in Parallel Computing and Systems Programming from the University of Malta. He has a first degree in Mathematics and Computing from the University of Malta. His research, published in over 35 refereed journals and international conferences, has focused on selective rendering for adapting computation for rendering methods, parallel graphics for speeding up global illumination, and multithreading for shared memory multiprocessors. His current research focuses mostly on interactive realistic graphics and serious games. [Editor]