Inara Pey has a great post about diabetes education in Second Life; Medical Centre granted $3.5 million to study diabetes education in Second Life. Inara’s post is inspired by an article by Nidhi Subbaraman at The Boston Globe; Second Life shows new promise as virtual forum for diabetes education.
The posts relate to the work of The Boston Medical Center with regards to their work with diabetes education in Second Life. The work began back in 2009 with a pilot study led by Suzanne Adams, a family physician at Boston Medical Center. The idea with the pilot study was to see if a group meeting in a virtual world, could help people to change their eating habits when compared to a group meeting in a physical location. Some participants accesses the program online, others went to the hospital :
“The point was to say, is it at least as good, or is it grossly inferior,” said John Wiecha, director of the Office of Medical Education at Boston University and BMC family physician, who was Mitchell’s colleague on the study.
The result, according to the article, was rather interesting :
The trial was a hit. Mitchell said the Second Life participants didn’t just sit in on the course sessions. They made friends, swapped recipes, had dance sessions, hung out. Most tellingly, participants wanted to know if they could involve their families in the game too.
For the span of the study, the diabetes of both groups improved at the same rate. Sessions online and in real life had comparable rates of attendance. But members of the Second Life group reported exercising more than the group that met in class. This was the most exciting result for Mitchell: The hint that the virtual experience might create a long-lasting lifestyle change.
These results have now led to a $3.5 million grant over five years for further research, as a press release explains :
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) has awarded a $3.5 million grant over five years to Suzanne Mitchell, MD, a family physician at Boston Medical Center (BMC), to study health outcomes of minority women with type 2 diabetes who participate in group medical visits to help them manage their diabetes. Participants will receive diabetes self-management (DSM) education and medical advice from BMC physicians either in the online virtual world Second Life or an in-person classroom setting. The study aims to determine the efficacy of virtual world and classroom groups in teaching DSM, to increase all participants’ physical activity levels, and to measure technological development milestones of the virtual group.
The Boston Globe article also quotes Gentle Heron, who works so very hard as part of Virtual Ability Inc.
Gentle Heron’s input relates to the importance of people staying engaged, but also with a realistic approach that some people may find Second Life isn’t for them :
Of the study participants, she says, “Some of them are going to say, wow. This virtual world stuff is going to be amazing.” Those will stay on, and others will go back to interacting with their friends on platforms like Facebook. “And you can never predict ahead of time who’s going to be in which group.”
This isn’t the first time Second Life has been used for programs like this, back in January I blogged; Baylor College Of Medicine Utilising Second Life To Aid Women With Physical Limitations Lose Weight. That post related to the work of Margaret A. Nosek :
We are now testing this program with small groups of women who have mobility limitations, but instead of making them deal with all the hassles of coming to one location, we hold our meetings in the virtual online world of Second Life.
Many people may find it odd that virtual worlds are being used for such purposes, but there’s a power in virtual worlds in terms of distance interaction, people can and do come out of their shells, talk more and engage more and it’s not just with regards to areas such as physical health either, there are many virtual world use cases where people are empowered by the fact that they aren’t physically in the same location as the rest of the group, it helps them to progress.
I wish the researchers and their patients all the best and hope that their programs bear a great degree of success.