Encouraging doctors to research rare diseases with a game
Rare Clues is a detective game that challenges general practitioners to dig deeper beyond initial assumptions and, in doing so, learn to better recognize rare conditions.
Common symptoms are often linked all too easily to the obvious diagnosis; but those symptoms may also be signs of a much rarer problem, that could easily be overlooked.
Obvious assumptions
Rare Clues plays with the obvious assumptions and asks the player to look a step further: asking follow-up questions, involving the patient’s environment and family, and forming a more complete picture of the symptom.
How does a game encourage doctors to investigate rare diseases?
Rare Clues puts doctors in the role of detectives: search the patient’s home for clues of a medical condition.
The player questions the patient about the discovered clues, thereby forming a more complete picture of not only the symptom, but also the context it exists in.
Suddenly it turns out that the overweight patient exercises regularly and eats a healthy diet. What could be the real reason for the excess weight?
The answer is a health condition the doctor may be seeing for the first time. Curiosity is sparked.
By stimulating an inquisitive eye, the game encourages doctors to further research that rare illness.
The steps to developing
a diagnosis game
Bringing together the team
The workgroup consists of 6-8 participants of the most important stakeholders.
This means the project team, the end users and, potentially, externals such as ethicists and healthcare professionals.
Game Ready Workshop
Together with the team of stakeholders, we
- define our goals and design criteria
- come up with ideas
- draft the first prototype
in a day-long creative workshop.
Development & testing
A prototype becomes a MVP, shaped by choices made with the whole team.
Development is an iterative process: we build, test and apply our learnings to the next round.
Implementation
The finished product is implemented and ready for use.
We provide training to ensure long-term use and enjoyment of the product.
