Medical Command and Control in digital games

1. Background

The capability to exercise command and control in critical situations is of essential importance for every war fighter. In a time when the Swedish Armed Forces capabilities are placed to United Nations and EU disposal this competence is of even greater importance, as war fighters are placed in difficult situations on foreign ground. The most difficult decisions are not those related to armed situations, but to social and cultural situations and most of all, situations related to the own units safety, such as when unit members are wounded.
Today there is no digital training aid for mental preparations of war fighters for these types of situations in the Swedish Armed Forces.
A movement within armed forces around the world is to use game technology and gaming for similar training and education needs. The Swedish Armed Forces have therefore commissioned the supporting agencies, Swedish National Defence College, FHS, Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, FMV, and Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI, to evaluate this movement.
The commission is currently aiming to study how digital games could be used as a mean and method to maintain, develop and explore existing and new capabilities. As one approach to study this comprehensive issue, a game testbed has been developed, called Foreign Ground.


Foreign Ground (SwAF, 2005) is a digital game aiming to promote decision making in non armed situations. The current version of Foreign Ground is based upon the Swedish UN- mission in Liberia and is aiming to demonstrate a proof of concept for how training of cultural decision making and awareness could be performed. In the Liberia scenario, the player acts as a team leader for a squad of dismounted soldiers performing a social patrol in a Monrovia-like environment. During the social patrols the squad leader is exposed to a number of diversified difficult situations not possible to solve with arms, such as interviewing and questioning villagers in order to locate a broken UN vehicle carrying food that is in need for protection from plundering.



2. Description of objectives

The purpose with this work is to develop a medical command and control scenario in the current version of Foreign Ground, aiming to demonstrate a proof of concept for how medical issues could be studied and evaluated in a game environment. More explicitly that the following topics should be regarded:

• Perform a literature review regarding the area games for health, especially, the area of first responders and how these games are used in training and education.
• Analyse the Swedish armed forces current approach to medical command and control
• Develop and implement a medical scenario in the digital game Foreign Ground.

These are the major parts in the work. However the ambition is that the work also should include a comparative study with Subject Matter Experts, SME:s, regarding some part of the implemented scenario, for example visualization of injury, interaction dialog between squad leader, paramedic and injured soldier, importance of sound or other issues of relevance identified during the analyse of the Swedish armed forces current approach to medical command and control.



3. Expected results

Expected results from the work should be a playable scenario in Foreign Ground demonstrating a proof of concept, a written report and presentation material.



Basic requirements

Knowledge in modification of games, Unreal Tournament 2004, Photoshop,

4. Practical information

The work is suitable for at least two persons, interested in performing a master thesis. It is sponsored by FHS, FMV and FOI, which constituted the SME-board. The practical work will be lead by FOI in Linköping. For additional information please contact associate professor Torbjörn Falkmer at the Rehabilitation Medicine at INR, Linköping University or Håkan Hasewinkel at FOI.



Point of contact

Torbjörn Falkmer, INR, 013- 22 1563