Ari Hollander, copyright Hunter Hoffman, UW

SnowWorld is a great example of a virtual reality serious game for health that was developed based on pain theory and research findings. It has also been validated for use with patients being treated for severe burns to help them tolerate and manage the excruciating pain of regularly undergoing burn treatment procedures.

If you’d like to see how it is used and what some of the gameplay is like, please take a look at this video:

This is also a very nice article that covers the life and event that led the soldier in the video to discover SnowWorld. Burning Man Newsmakers: GQ.com

More hospitals should be using this technology to help their patients manage pain and more research like the research done on SnowWorld should be carried out on serious games for health.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth discussion of SnowWorld in a follow-up post.