Why Host RePlay Health?

Can games change the hearts and minds of decision-makers and healthcare providers in the U.S.?  Can they fix the healthcare cost crisis?  Tiltfactor’s RePlay Health project aims to do just that.

In conjunction with the Rippel Foundation and The Dartmouth Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, our design team modeled, and made playable, elements of the ReThink Health simulation in a way that players could experience empathy and understanding for the many major players in the healthcare system.

Through this live action, easy to play sport, healthcare providers, policy-makers, and healthcare recipients can quickly and simply experience the state of our healthcare system, and the options we can pursue to change it.  Through their decisions, players can interact with the causes and effects of big “what if” questions in healthcare.  What if we paid healthcare providers differently? What if our hospitals ran more efficiently? What if everyone only went to the ER when they actually needed emergency care?

In his famous New Yorker article, The Cost Conundrum, Atul Gawande writes about how the solutions to our medical cost crisis are not going to be policy change. Instead, he says the solutions lie in encouraging organizations that value quality healthcare and do not treat patients as revenue sources. While such organizations exist, running healthcare like a business and optimizing profits is becoming more and more the norm. In short, the solution is attitude change that leads to behavioral change. This is where the RePlay Health games come in. We expect that by allowing participants to experience and interact with a microcosm of the healthcare system through a game, we can achieve that attitudinal change

So, why should you host and facilitate a RePlay Health game session for your class, institution, or friend group?

• RePlay Health offers a way to enter into a blue sky conversation about possibilities in health delivery.
• By activating an embodied, dynamic approach, the game offers an excellent mode of teaching to stimulate behavior change.
• RePlay Health helps break down pre-existing roles, and allows for the redefinition of roles and for the adoption of new viewpoints.
• The game dynamically explores risk and social determinants, and integrates both a clinical mode and public health mode–another breakdown in boundaries.
• Stakeholders are motivated to play RePlay Health because it’s a fun and engaging experience!