SOCIAL VENTURES
WORDS MATTHEW GOODING IMAGES JULIAN CLAXTON PHOTOGRAPHY
When is a medical treatment not a medical treatment? When you turn it into a game, of course. Will Jackson explains how his company, Playphysio, based at Allia Future Business Centre, uses gamification to change the lives of children with cystic fibrosis
In partnership with
patients susceptible to a wide range of damaging infections. Treatment of CF involves a twice-daily 90-minute exercise routine to build up lung function, something that, unsurprisingly, soon becomes a slog for all involved. “We spent nine years playing the game of chronic disease, and it got us to a state of dysfunction as a family,” Will recalls. “Arguing for an hour and a half at a time wasn’t unusual for us. Every family experiences this on a lower level with things like brush your teeth, clean your room and do your homework, but when it’s something that directly impacts the health of your child on a long-term basis, the effect on the parent is one of significant guilt. You really feel the burden of care, because you’re hardwired to want to keep your child healthy. “The therapy for the lungs is basically a routine of blowing into a device, while lying in various different positions. It’s almost Victorian in nature, and it’s been prescribed for CF patients for more than 40 years. It generates 250 million ‘blows’ a year and almost a million hours of stress and arguing for families, and a lot of the time it’s not even working, because it isn’t being done properly.”
It was after one particularly arduous morning that Will had an epiphany. “I dropped Isabella off at school, having just about made it in on time,” he says. “I was walking home breathing a big sigh of relief because that part of the day was over, but thinking it was going to happen again in the evening. That was when it dawned on me that our routine was causing us big problems as a family; no one else was coming to save us, but I had the skills and experience as a parent to do something about it. “To get kids to do stuff, you’ve got to make it fun, make them want to do it. And if it’s fun and engaging, then maybe they’ll do it better. That idea was enough to make me jump onto eBay and buy a few bits of kit.” With a background in product development and web design, Will soon concocted a system that connects to the therapy device, turning it into an input for games, which can be played on the patient’s mobile phone. Players can only progress in their game if they are carrying out the exercises correctly, and their progress is logged so it can be monitored by doctors. Playphysio’s system has already been enthusiastically received by the CF community in the UK, which numbers
rguing with your kids is an unavoidable part of parenthood, but throwing a chronic disease into the mix takes domestic squabbles to another level, as Will Jackson knows all too well. Will is founder of Playphysio, a start-up gamifying medical treatments for children. His daughter, Isabella, suffers from cystic fibrosis (CF), a condition that causes a thick build- up of sticky mucus in the lungs and other parts of the body, and leaves
To get kids to do stuff, you've got to make it fun, make themwant to do it. And if it's fun and engaging, then maybe they'll do it better"
ISSUE 02 32
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