BloodFeud

Blood Feud© is a medical educational game:
- designed to teach young patients about specific blood disorders and diseases, in this case, leukemia, sickle cell anemia, and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP)
- where, by playing the game, young patients will understand better the impact that the medicine has on their health and hopefully increase compliance in taking their medications
- where patients’ friends and classmates will have a better understanding of these diseases and blood disorders and have a clearer insight into how this impacts the patients’ lives

This project was developed by Michael Westbrook as partial fulfillment of his masters thesis requirements in the Department of Engineering at Norfolk State University (NSU), Norfolk, VA. The thesis director is Dr. Rasha Morsi and members of the committee are: Dr. Jun Wang and Mr. Bratislav (BaTo) Cvijetic. Research was conducted at the Creative Gaming and Simulation Lab at NSU. Web: http://cgs.nsu.edu; Contact: rmorsi@nsu.edu and 757-823-0047

GAMEPLAY
Blood Feud©:
- includes three levels of play: the ITP level, the Leukemia level, and the Sickle Cell Anemia level
- the player can select any level to start playing
- each game level provides an informational page describing the blood disorder or disease, then instructions on how the medicine works as part of the gameplay help
- the game is designed and implemented so that the medicine used in the treatment of each ailment is incorporated in the actual gameplay
- keeps track of high score

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some information on how the medicines work was provided by Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters’ (CHKD) doctors and nurses. Special thanks go to Dr. William Owen, Director of the Hematology Program, Dr. Linda Pegram, and Ms. Joanne Latimer, RN at the Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at CHKD in Norfolk, VA, USA. Special thanks also go to Kareem Ibrahim for helping us test the game. And last but not least, thanks to Myrna Ibrahim for being the inspiration for the game idea. Myrna (15) was diagnosed with chronic ITP at age 5 and continues to receive the IVIG treatments at CHKD every month.

CREATIVE GAMING AND SIMULATION LAB BACKGROUND
The Creative Gaming and Simulation lab (CGS) is a 3700 sq. ft. facility housed in Marie V. McDemmond Center for Applied Research (MVMCAR) at Norfolk State University. CGS specializes in Modeling, Simulation, Visualization, and Training Technologies (MSV&TT) research and development in areas that include game-based and interactive web-based applications as well as interactive training solutions for education, industry, and government.

[Blood Feud© is optimized for the iPod Touch and iPhone.]