Background/Purpose

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) is the most common chronic paediatric rheumatic disease and cause of physical and psychological disability, with family and school consequences.

If the advances in therapeutics as biologicals have revolutionized the outcome of children with JIA, it is necessary to develop educational materials to increase their independence and improve their quality of life.

Information about the disease and treatments, the ability to cope with difficult situations, having good reflexes concerning biotherapies are all skills needed to live well the disease every day.

Democratization of computers and smart phones has led us to develop a serious game for children as an educational learning instrument.

Methods

The game was developed according to the steps of Assessment, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE model).

A steering committee was formed with a pediatric rheumatologist, a patient organization and an agency of video game developers including an art director, a lead programmer and a graphist.

Decisions were strained by a limited budget support.

The National Association against Rheumatoid Arthritis initiated the project and provides funding, manages logistics and monitoring.

The pediatric rheumatologist initially established a series of themes to be developed in accordance with the association and transmitted scientific data to developers.

The  developers have proposed animations and graphics, game plays.

The committee has defined the specifications at different points during physical meetings and conference calls:

– Format

– Themes and key messages

– Graphics (places, people)

Results

The committee has decided to create an adventure game with differents interactives activities.

The following directions have been validated:

– Development of a serious game powered by Unity¨ for computers, smartphones and tablets to allow use in all places (waiting rooms), designed to run on the IOS (apple) and Android operating systems.

– Definition of key messages and themes: family, school, sport, hospital, rehabilitation, treatment, further investigations.

– Graphic choices :

á       Hospital (single place with the greatest number of possible themes)

á       Two avatars (one boy, one girl) to facilitate the identification of players.

Conclusion

To our knowledge, this is the first application dedicated to JIA.

To ensure the appropriateness of its speech, its ergonomics and ease of use, the global level of satisfaction, a neuropsychiatrist and the KOURIR organization (parents of children with JIA), will evaluate the beta version.

Adaptations would be made prior to the release of the game. Eventually, other game trays could complement this version in the future (adding school and home).