1. Games for Health 2010
Bruce Milligan - Designer
Bill Becker - Lead Programmer
Simulation and Training Environment Lab
Code Orange
A Multiplayer 3-D Game
for Hospital Mass Casualty Incident Training
2. Who are we?
Division of MedStar Health
SiTEL offers professional training, including:
• On-line education
• Live hands-on training with mannequins
• Clinical medical simulation, virtual apparatus, and other
devices
• 3-D multimedia including serious games
• More than 70 employees
• Headquartered in Washington, DC
3. • A $3.8 billion, not-for-profit organization
• The largest health care system in the greater
Baltimore-Washington corridor
• 9 hospitals and 20 other health-related businesses
• Over 29,000 employees and 5,300 affiliated
physicians
• Serves a half-million patients annually
• Committed to the use of new technologies for training.
Who is MedStar Health?
4. Traditional MCI Training
• Classroom lectures and exercises
• Tabletop exercises in HCC
• Live training events
5. Liabilities of Traditional Training Methods
• Unrealistic
• Too short
• Too small-scale
• Too disruptive
Traditional training exercises take valuable people and
equipment offline. They also consume vital space from
hospitals that often have a 90% daily occupancy rate.
• Too expensive!
It can cost up to $50,000-$250,000 for a one-day exercise
6. Code Orange - Game Vitals
Our audience: Hospital management and staff
• First-person, 3-D virtual hospital
• Up to 12 human players
• Approximately 2 hours of playing
time per session
• First Scenario – Conventional terror
bombing
• Editable scenarios
• Integrated into SiTEL’s Learning
Management System
• Full event capture for AAR and
offline post-session analysis
.
7. More Benefits: 3-D Games as a Serious Choice
• 3-D environments are
compelling
• 3-D training is less
expensive
• Mistakes can be made
• Training areas are there
when needed
• “Volunteers” are always
available
Immersive and realistic
Training costs can be reduced
Better to kill NPCs than your
patients
A 3-D hospital is always
available
Code Orange includes over 400
patient and staff NPCs.
8. The Mission
• To create a credible virtual hospital
Simulate the sights, sounds, and pressure of a real hospital during a crisis
• To make a game that is both compelling and realistic
If it isn’t compelling, they won’t play
If it isn’t realistic, they won’t learn what they need to know
Create an MCI situation – something hospital employees may encounter only
once in their careers
Effectively teach that all the normal rules change during an MCI – real triaging
occurs (some patients will die), time and space become luxuries, and that working
with and trusting unknown people and organizations is a must
• To make a game that is useful for two players or for a dozen
Meets requirements for always available training
Requires credible AI for all player positions
9. Code Orange: Strategic Goals
• Teaching staff how to handle a surge of patients into a hospital that
is already almost full and how to handle patient flow throughout the
hospital
• Teaching the structure and procedures of HICS (the Hospital
Incident Command System)
• Helping staff to focus on four key resources during a disaster:
People (staff and patients)
Supplies
Space (hospital bays and other areas)
Time (the one resource that is always fixed)
• Teaching the importance of communication
10. The Code Orange Virtual Hospital
Triage Area
Emergency Department
Hospital
Command
Center
15. The Job Action Sheet
The heart of the HICS
system:
Players will use them as
personal “scorecards” in
the game, so they can
keep track of whether or
not they are
accomplishing key tasks
at the right time
16. Communications are the Key
• If you don’t communicate with your colleagues during an MCI,
people will die
• Code Orange puts a premium on communications between players
Chat (same room)
Telephone (i.e., private chat) & voicemail
Written messages using HICS forms.
• Technical challenges arise in the capture and analysis of game data
as a result of permitting “free-form” chat during gameplay
17. Part of an Integrated System
Data Repository
SiTELMS
Code Orange
Credentials and
Session information
Offline Analysis
Tools
Refineassessment
Refine Game Model
18. A Unique Partnership
Partners in the development of Code Orange include:
• MedStar Health physicians, nurses, and administrators
• Incident Commanders and staff from hospitals in D.C. and
elsewhere
• In-house subject matter experts
• Code Orange Advisory Board (with members located around the
U.S. and abroad)
20. Don’t Forget who the Real Experts are
• By the time we finish a commercial product, we
typically know far more than the average user will ever
know.
• By the time we finish a serious game, we know a
fraction of what our end users have known for years.
Serious Challenges
