Transcript

Using electronic game techniques to create better hospital experiences: Keith Joe at TEDxMelbourne

[Applause] the fear of hospitals when I was about 8 years old I experienced my first feelings of being scared of Hospital you see we came from a typical Asian family we ate things like uh pigs trots and seaweed and chicken feet and my mother would regularly steam fish and I was a typical boy I didn't chew my food properly and as you would guess one day a fishbone got stuck in my throat and no matter how much IED anded it up another Asian tra I couldn't displace it so my parents said you have to go to hospital well I was terrified I was afraid I've never been to hospital I didn't know what it was about but I knew that my parents were anxious about going to hospital and often when they went to hospital and visited their friends a funeral would soon follow so I was not going to have any of that so you can imagine me holding on to Furniture holding on to this holding on to my brothers and sisters say making myself too big for the door jam I was not going to get in that car so my mother she changed tact she took a different approach she sat me down in the kitchen table on a chair and calm me down as only mothers can do and with the torch in one hand and the TOs of her trade in the other and with the skill and delicacy of an ENT surgeon she pulled that bone right [Applause] out now I must say I was the kid with the lowest voice in grade two after that if I said to you you had to go to hospital today how would you feel we just discovered that lump it can't wait you need to go for some further tests or how about that pain that pain right there could be cardiac could be nothing could be indigestion but we need to give do further tests hospitals are places of healing but ironically they can be one of the most stressful and least restful places and it's the fear of the unknown it's the fear of the unfamiliar which creates anxiety particularly in children well almost 40 years on I have children of my own and the world's a very different place for dinner we have fish fillets and my kids are uh technology natives digital natives they have computers laptops mobile devices smartphones they know about Skype Twitter Facebook Instagram but they still do all these other things they still play sport and they do and they do things like bowling now bowling is an old favorite but when your kids tell you they want to go bowling it actually means they want to have a couple of games of bowling which is all good and fun and then they want to play Arcade games and they and by the way Dad you're you're you're paying for them right you you're paying for the tokens and so they busily go around collecting these little paper tickets and at the end of the session when it's time to go home they line up at the cabinet and I SP a long time trying to choose and my daughter says shall I have the princess ring or shall I have the bouncy ball or maybe I should have those bracelets and eventually she chooses a princess ring and she shows me hey Dad look the princess ring oh that that's nice dear and I'm thinking to myself that thing cost 5 cents to make and I've just paid $15 for it and it for them it's the world of fun I drop them home and I go to work strangely enough I work in the place that I was the most scared of as an 8-year-old well things haven't changed much there in the last almost 40 years bad things still happen to people and the death rate still the same one per person but most of the time it's not as serious as that it's more like this kind of common laceration and you can imagine it the kid's gone flying he's caught his arm on something and he's cut it so there he is with his mom carrying in the cubicle waiting for the doctor and here I am I'm coming along close are getting behind me and the kid cries I have that effect on people cuz he's scared isn't he he's scared what's going to happen to me it hurt for this thing to happen it's going to hurt to get it fixed I'm in a really unfamiliar place and who is this guy and there's no escape cuz he's just closed the curtain and I give Mom the options well you know we could suture it suure the kid hears and he starts crying even more sutes stitches stitches sound like they hurt and I say well maybe we could try gluing it yeah I like glue glue is good I know about glue I've grown up with glue all my little short life I can deal with glue it doesn't hurt and So eventually we glue this wound and everything's okay and I give the kid a peace offering a kind of look you know no hard feelings buddy peace offering well I've got no stickers today cuz R of stickers so I asked the nurse can we get the kid an icy Pole now in hospital an icy Pole is actually balanced therapeutic electrolyte solution Frozen in a little stick to resemble an icy pole so my someone nurse gives the kid an icy pole and the kid opens it up and takes one lick and when was the last time an icy pole was salty and from that day forth the kid starts to dislike hospital food and at the end of the day I go home with the sounds of the emergency department still buzzing in my ears back to my children back home back to their World of Fun and I'm thinking to myself we're in a world of fun and these kids in a world of fear how can I bring this world of fun closer to this world of fear so it's not so scary well you guess that one day one of my children becomes a patient so what happens is it's Cup Day weekend in Melbourne and they're having a basketball game and my son Loy Falls heavily on his right wrist fortunately for Loy his dad's an emergency position unfortunately for Loy at halftime his dad has a little feel and it's got point tenderness it's not displaced it's probably a green stick fracture he'll be okay however doubly unfortunately for locky his dad's the coach and makes him play the second half because we've got no subs unfortunately for his dad he's got a lot of explaining to do with gets home to Mom so now we're in this unavoidable situation Loy needs to go to hospital loy's World of Fun is now getting closer to this world of fear this world of unknown okay and I think to myself and I have an idea and the ideas around bringing electronic gaming to the hospital environment to demystify it to engage my son and patience to involve Hospital staff to reward them the patients for their participation and treatment and to bring along the community and the businesses which want to support the hospital and it goes something like this imagine Lu and I get to the hospital and I pull out my smartphone and we log on to the hospital app and Loy creates an avatar of himself and the Avatar represents his journey in the hospital his mission to get better his treatment and the hospital becomes a maze a treasure hunt and the first stop is the x-ray department and he helps himself to guard himself to the x-ray department and when he gets here he gets a reward points points much like those tickets at bowling electronic points and then while we're waiting he pulls up an x-ray game and that x-ray game tells him about x-rays tells him about the machine and who radiographer is and he's very familiar now he's not so scared he's getting it and he gets more points during this game and and you get it right as he goes along gets his plaster gets his treatment he's now looking forward to getting more and more points and at the end of his Hospital stay he's got enough points for a reward and that reward might be an iTunes voucher or tickets to the milour Tigers basketball game or something like that and he leaves a happy kid wouldn't that be awesome now it's not only an app but it's a systematic way and a new way to transact Health in our hospitals and there are many more examples suturing pathology tests CT scanning Radiology radiotherapy chemotherapy ECGs eegs emgs appendectomies ectomies Singo ectomies we're privileged to have some of the best game developers in the world right here in mbour and I've asked them to bring their World of Fun into the world of the hospital and we're on a mission we're on a mission to improve kids experience of Health Care and we've engaged some International content partners and those International content partners are giving us International characters characters that your children would recognize and those characters will be leading kids through the hospital and we're looking for hospitals hospitals that want to do something new to fix an old problem with a fresh set of eyes and my wish for you is in the very near future with the aid of a little bit of technology that your experience of Health Care will be an interactive engaging and less scary experience because little kids become big kids and big kids become adults and we all become patients thank you [Applause]