Pandemic Response: The Simulation

Pandemic Response is a simulation to train hospital administrators to deal with epidemiological events, including pandemics.

I provided consulting game design for this project, over several meetings and design sessions. My main contribution was to research and design a full tabletop prototype early on, and then take the team through this scenario as a learning exercise.

Partly I drew on my own HAZMAT training from the army, and while attending a hospital disaster training in DC (where I did triage in full respirator and suit).

The approach I advocated in design emphasized the overarching principles and key on-the-ground actions and strategies involved, based on historical-qualitative experience (in particular, reports on the SARS event and response at the North York General Hospital in Toronto). The final approach taken in the game was quantitative, emphasizing data simulation, with key actions integrated in a summary manner.

Pandemic Response was developed to beta stage by Simquest (from the Washington DC area), working with Virtual Heroes, and was funded by the United States Office of the Secretary of Defence.

Code Orange: The Simulation

I was a core designer at BreakAway Games for Code Orange, a computer 3D real-time strategy serious game to train hospital staff to deal with mass casualty incidents. I gave the project a strong new design structure and overall creative direction that reflected both the core strategic elements and the “feel” of disaster medicine at the hospital level.

I did extensive research on the topic, consulted with many experts (such as Israeli trauma specialist Dr Asher Hirshberg); brought in subject matter experts (SMEs) to work closely with myself; attended numerous courses, symposiums, meetings, disaster drills; spent many hours observing at the famous MedStar shock/trauma facility in Washington DC, and toured many hospital critical care facilities. I also became an unofficial expert in the Hospital Emergency Incident Command System (HEICS), and did extensive client relations work.

I designed a tabletop prototype that covered the response of an entire hospital to a terrorist bomb scenario. I brought the development team (overseen by our subject-matter experts) through this prototype, so they could understand how the situation worked. I wrote the design documentation for the computer game, including spreadsheet-based data fields and mock-ups of the core user-interface.

I provided design leadership, guiding the development team in taking on the complex medical subject matter; boiling complicated materials down to a workable design, especially at the clinical level.

Code Orange was a project of Washington Hospital Center's ER1 initiative.