The Oregon Trail And Pioneering Good Health IT Design

Video games must be well designed in order to entice players and the Oregon Trail game is no different. In fact, a lot can be learned from the game when it comes to designing effective health IT solutions.

By Jonathon Dreyer

I grew up during the era when PC video gaming was gaining popularity. It was an exciting time when trail-blazing designers and developers created masterpieces like the Oregon Trail, forcing school children everywhere to decide whether to ford the river, or caulk and float their wagons across it—and, most importantly, learn what those phrases meant. It also taught the importance of anticipating and preparing for the unexpected: dialog boxes seemed to constantly interrupt game play and announce a drought or another bout of dysentery. The game was an endless maze of unknowns, which was scary when you were just trying to get your family and animals safely, and healthily, to new land.

It turns out that designing good health IT isn’t that far off from the lessons we all learned from playing the Oregon Trail. The path to an integrated healthcare ecosystem has proven challenging: some pioneers have been lost along the way, while others have persevered, making inroads despite the dense regulatory fog. Here are four basic lessons I learned from playing the Oregon Trail and how they map to the challenges we face when it comes to good health IT design:

Please log in or register below to read the full article.