Serious Silverlight Games: PMP, thoughts on cancer research

One of the problems with cancer research is how to utilize single trials for research.  What that means is this: Say you have an interesting result from a patient that responds well to a drug or drug cocktail, it doesn’t count as research.  With respect to PMP, there are enough patients worldwide to constitute a research program like there is for breast cancer or prostrate cancer.

Using an approach similar to the SETI project that had people doing research on interstellar radio waves a few years ago, would it be possible to use the similar approach to doing research on PMP?

What if the serious game could implement research through play.  The components that make up the PMP or PC disease would constitute a component of the game.  Players would use the many constraints forced on the human body in the game and they would then use various approaches.  Since there are so many variables, it is difficult to use the digital programming approach to gain a solution.  Plus the cost of careful programming is quite high, and the patient count is quite low.  Let’s face, good programmers are not going to work for free, but gamers might work in solutions if it is fun.

How would you set up a game like this?  It is just an idea. 

Take a look at the use of artificial intelligence in games, in actuality the game AI usually is simply responding to the player(s) in a variable manner.  What if the AI was designed to respond like actual bacteria, cancer related viruses, and so forth.  The player would then respond using various levels of medical efforts such as drugs, etc.  The play would then be graded according to some sort of criteria that mapped to known parameters from patients that had the disease.

Other types of research, like the use of animals in medical research could be minimized through similar types of research through games.

There, that is what  I will call the idea: Research through Games.

Now where is John Nordlinger’s phone number, I need to give him a call on Monday about this idea.

Let me know what you think,  but I think this is a powerful idea! :)