Why Healthcare Games Aren't Just Child's Play

At Nemours Children's Health, Scott Shaw helps the health system's young patients play games. He's doing a lot more than just letting them have fun.

Health IT isn't all fun and games. Until it is.

Scott Shaw has perhaps the most enviable tech job in healthcare. His job at Nemours Children's Health in Wilmington, Delaware is to make sure all of the hospital's pediatric patients can play video games – and to play with them if their family members and friends aren't available.

"A lot of people go, 'That seems like a dream job,'" the pediatric health system's Game and Technology Specialist says. "And yeah, it is. I get to play video games with kids in the hospital while they're here."

"We have a lot of long-term kiddos," he continues. "We have [children] that are here for repeated treatments and things like that. Getting to build relationships with those kids, doing something fun and normalizing … can distract them from what they're going through and … connect them back to a community that they've already been taking a part in. That really helps to make the day go by a little easier."

Serious Business

Fo Shaw and Nemours, playing is serious business – and it's a strategy that healthcare leaders across the country should be considering. Video games as part of inpatient entertainment services promote patient engagement and satisfaction, helping both patients and their families get through the trying time of being in a hospital. In addition, innovative healthcare providers are using games and gaming technology to boost clinical outcomes, through specially designed games that tackle hot-button care gaps like chronic care management and medication adherence.

While it isn't known how many health systems and hospitals actively support gaming or have programs in place, organizations like the Starlight Children's Foundation and Child's Play Charities work with children's hospitals to help their patients access games. As of 2021, Starlight Gaming has helped more than 11.6 million children in more than 900 children's hospitals in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, while Child's Play is partnering with nearly 200 pediatric hospitals to integrate gaming and technology into pediatric patient care.

And that's where Shaw comes in.

A former chair of the Game Design and Development Program at Wilmington University, he was brought into Nemours in 2022 through a two-year grant from Child's Play. His work was so successful that Nemours made him a full-time staff member last year.

The 4 Pillars of Gaming at Nemours

Shaw's work at Nemours is structured around four strategies:

Set up and maintain the gaming platform at the hospital and make sure all patients can access and play games. Shaw says he often gets surprised looks from patients and their parents when he walks into a room (he used to get surprised looks from the doctors and nurses as well, but he's become a familiar figure now). And not just because he's usually in a Hawaiian shirt.

"I have had parents, after I give my intro, explain what I do, they will immediately look at their kiddo and be like, there's your dream job right there," he says.

Aside from introducing patients and their parents to the gaming platform, he's in the background, making sure everything is working properly and the kids have access to age-appropriate games.

Play games with patients who need gaming partners. This is an undervalued responsibility. Parents and siblings usually can't stay in the room forever, and the toughest time for kids is when they're alone in the hospital room. That's when Shaw steps in.

"If you don't have a buddy, if mom or dad or your brother or sister aren't here and you need somebody to play with, just tell your nurse and I'll come and hang out for a little while and we can either talk about gaming or play some games," he tells the kids.

That goes a long way toward making someone feel a little bit more comfortable at a very trying time.

Help develop programs that use games to improve care management. This is where Shaw's job intersects with clinical care. Aside from entertainment, these games can help kids better understand their care, or get them through a tough time. Shaw says he's helped kids during a stressful wound dressing change by putting them on a VR set that has them interact with kittens, or on a roller coaster ride timed perfectly to end with the dressing change.

Shaw also develops games that can help kids stuck in their rooms explore the hospital campus, or go to places they would have gone on vacation with their families had they not had to go to the hospital.

They're merging gaming tech and patient care to "help kids feel normal again [and] distract them from what they're going through," he says. Most importantly, "when they need it, [he can] be the support system throughout the hospital for kids."

Help develop special projects that merge gaming with patient care.

These are the clinical games – games that help children diagnosed with diabetes to understand their chronic condition and how to care for themselves, or games that explain cancer or asthma or heart disease. These can be better tools than any doctor's printout or tutorial.

This is where gaming, games and gaming theory hold the most potential in healthcare. They can be used to help not only children, but patients of all ages understand what they're going through and teach them how to manage their care and live healthier lives. They're tools that can unlock not only better engagement and adherence, but also better clinical outcomes.

"I think we're going to get to that point where a lot more folks are looking at it seriously and going, 'This is where we need to be,'" says Shaw.

Understanding Why Games Are Played

One important aspect about gaming at Nemours, Shaw says, is that it's not based on the idea of getting a reward for completing a task successfully.

"Making you better is not a reward," he points out. "This is what we do. We want to enable that."

Games, he says, are for entertainment and learning, not winning prizes. To that end, it can be fun to lose a game and see what happens, and to be able to play it again with a different outcome.

The Clubhouse

Shaw works often from The Clubhouse, a third floor haven in the health system that encompasses activities and arts and crafts organized by activity coordinators and child life specialists, a preschool area and dramatic play area, a teen area with an air hockey table, pool table and the aforementioned gaming systems, and even a CCTV studio (he says Bingo on Wednesdays is very popular).

It's a very different atmosphere in there, compared to the rest of the hospital. That, given the very nature of a pediatric hospital, makes it a special place.

"If we're out here at The Clubhouse and we're playing [games], you'll hear lots of laughter, lots of hooting and hollering and giggles," he says. "And to hear that within a hospital, I know I'm doing something right. If we're bringing smiles or bringing laughter, families are having fun, kids are having fun, siblings are having fun. … That is the best indicator that I think it's working."

Shaw, who networks often on a Slack channel for fellow pediatric gaming specialists and attends symposiums on gaming in healthcare, says the network isn't big enough by far. When asked what most surprises him about the use of games in healthcare, his response is, 'Why doesn't every hospital have a me?'

This should be an integral part of any health system, he says, helping adults as much and as often as children. Every hospital IT platform should encompass games and gaming, and every hospital should have gaming specialists.

"I would love to take this up and down the care spectrums to really see what kind of impacts we can make using gaming," he says. "It would be a lot of fun."

Much more than just fun.