Designing a Serious Game to Map the ‘Process Genome’ of Hospitals

Better understanding the processes within a hospital and integrating this understanding into a virtual model capable of allowing dynamic simulations, would have value for multiple healthcare stakeholders. We outline one potential user model able to generate such a ‘genome mapping.’ We describe an innovation platform, with knowledge sourced from both in-house subject matter experts, client and customer subject matter experts as well as third party suppliers, customers, end-users and non-client subject matter experts delivering inputs through crowdsourcing. We conceptualize the innovation platform and its crowdsourcing within a ‘serious game.’ In this view, the business model is built around a technical solution (the visualization of the hospital), and encompasses local and remote additions to populate the visualization, suggest refinements, conduct what-if changes, learn from, etc. the continually updated technical solution. Local additions and refinements are motivated through extrinsic incentives and are achieved by frontline delivery staff complemented by appropriate technical managers. Remote additions and refinements are motivated chiefly through intrinsic incentives when contributed by users, endusers and clinicians, but are motivated by extrinsic need for credentialing, interoperability certification and training when contributed by medical device and infrastructure suppliers.