Publication: Using serious games for improving medical education: an application to cytopathology
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2016
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Abstract
El objetivo principal del proyecto es desarrollar una plataforma compuesta por aplicaciones educativas gamificadas para el entrenamiento de personal médico en países de recursos limitados en citopatología mediante dispositivos Android de bajo presupuesto. Antes de desplegar la plataforma en países con recursos limitados, va a ser probada en un curso de Introducción a Citopatología de la Escuela Médica de Harvard. El proyecto final debe funcionar tanto en PCs como en dispositivos Android de bajo coste (p.e. 50 dólares americanos, Amazon Kindle Fire 7 pulgadas) y no puede depender de una conexión a internet continua. Se han analizado algunas aplicaciones con propósito de juego y simulaciones gamificadas para tener una base de conocimiento común entre expertos médicos y desarrolladores. También se han estudiado juegos y aplicaciones cuyo objetivo es hacer uso de imágenes médicas para entrenamiento de personal médico o están enfocadas al diagnóstico mediante colaboración por parte de personal no-médico. Esto nos ha permitido identificar las mejores mecánicas de juego para nuestro caso de uso. A continuación, se han comparado diferentes herramientas de edición y motores de juegos desde el punto de vista del rendimiento ofrecido, las plataformas soportadas, su documentación y licencia. Todo ello nos ha permitido elegir la tecnología de desarrollo (libGDX). Finalmente, diseñamos e implementamos un sistema integrado de aplicaciones (editor de contenido y generador de juegos). El sistema está enfocado a reducir la dependencia entre el personal experto y los desarrolladores para crear y mantener contenido educativo. Se trata de una arquitectura formada por un servicio RESTful, y un editor asociado, orientado a la gestión de contenido educativo orientado para citopatología y dos clientes para diferentes plataformas (PC y Android) que consumen dicho servicio. Finalmente, se presentan las conclusiones y el trabajo futuro del proyecto.
The main goal of the project is to develop a platform composed of gamified educational applications to train cytologists in resource-limited areas using low-cost Android tablets. Before deploying the platform in those areas, it’s going to be tested at an Introduction to Cytopathology course at Harvard Medical School. The project has some challenging technical requirement as to be deployable both in PCs and in low-cost Android tablets (e.g., USD 50 Kindle Fire 7 inches tablet) and not depend on a stable internet connection. We started reviewing some of the existing games or gamified e-learning modules to create a shared understanding between medical experts and developers about possible game mechanics and to identify which of those approaches can be suitable for our case. We have also studied a number of games and applications with different approaches and goals that use the analysis of medical image, either to train medical personnel or are intended for crowdsourced collaboration in diagnosis done by non-medical experts. This initial study allowed us to identify key gameplay mechanics that can be applied to our use case. Afterwards, we compared different authoring tools and game development frameworks from the point of view of the target platform, performance, documentation, license, learning assessment support and game mechanics. With this study we have been able to select the development technology of our project (libGDX). Finally, we design and implement an integrated system easy to use by the medical personnel (content editor and game generator). The system allows domain experts to manage the content without depending on programmers. The solution’s architecture is composed of a RESTful service, and editor, aimed at managing cytopathology oriented content and two clients for different platforms (PC and Android) that use this service. Finally the conclusions and future work are presented.
The main goal of the project is to develop a platform composed of gamified educational applications to train cytologists in resource-limited areas using low-cost Android tablets. Before deploying the platform in those areas, it’s going to be tested at an Introduction to Cytopathology course at Harvard Medical School. The project has some challenging technical requirement as to be deployable both in PCs and in low-cost Android tablets (e.g., USD 50 Kindle Fire 7 inches tablet) and not depend on a stable internet connection. We started reviewing some of the existing games or gamified e-learning modules to create a shared understanding between medical experts and developers about possible game mechanics and to identify which of those approaches can be suitable for our case. We have also studied a number of games and applications with different approaches and goals that use the analysis of medical image, either to train medical personnel or are intended for crowdsourced collaboration in diagnosis done by non-medical experts. This initial study allowed us to identify key gameplay mechanics that can be applied to our use case. Afterwards, we compared different authoring tools and game development frameworks from the point of view of the target platform, performance, documentation, license, learning assessment support and game mechanics. With this study we have been able to select the development technology of our project (libGDX). Finally, we design and implement an integrated system easy to use by the medical personnel (content editor and game generator). The system allows domain experts to manage the content without depending on programmers. The solution’s architecture is composed of a RESTful service, and editor, aimed at managing cytopathology oriented content and two clients for different platforms (PC and Android) that use this service. Finally the conclusions and future work are presented.
Description
Máster en Ingeniería Informática, Facultad de Informática, Departamento de Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial, curso 2015-2016.