I-Corps: Mobidemics: Using Mobile Gaming for Healthcare

University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville AR

Investigators

Abstract

Traditional study of infectious diseases is based on pure simulation, patient interviews, or mathematical models. Since these techniques are not founded on real social interaction data, they are usually error-prone. To mitigate the above challenge, the PIs propose Mobidemics, a mobile phone-based gaming system that aims to change the way epidemiologists study the transmission of communicable diseases. Mobidemics provides a live interactive social gaming platform based on physical location and is tuned to the spread of infectious diseases. Working with computational epidemiologists, the team has identified a set of variables that can be used to describe infectious/contagious diseases. For instance, the distance at which a patient is infectious depends on the disease class and can be modeled in the virtual (gaming) world as a distance constraint at which a player can infect or shoot each other. Similarly, other changes to the game variable set can be made on the fly using the Mobidemics backend to provide an unprecedented control over a disease spread study and to model real life events and possibilities. The gaming frontend provides the necessary incentive to users to share their location and social interaction data. Mobidemics is a unique platform for collecting location data, social interaction data, and infection spread data. It provides the flexibility to tune the strategy based on the disease class being studied. The key components of infection spread, such as immunity to a disease (which is a function of age, build, and gender) is modeled as simple semantics. Hence, realistic real-time emulations of spread of infectious diseases can be performed using Mobidemics. Infectious diseases such as the H1N1 flu accounts for thousands of human casualties every year. With better understanding of how infections spread in a social network, remedial action can be taken to contain them. Mobidemics provides a platform for understanding disease spread as well as collecting and analyzing disease spread data through a real time mobile phone based game. Hence, Mobidemics can have a large societal impact. The data collected and the services provided would also be useful to broader group of epidemiologists, companies, and municipalities interested in social interaction data.