Rash Decisions: gamifying dermatology education

Rash Decisions is a gamified learning app that combines visual learning, targeted questions, and role-playing mechanics to teach dermatological course content to medical students in an engaging and effective new way.

The player takes on the persona of a practicing professional, analyzing fictional patients by looking at real-world photography, diagnosing conditions, and learning how to save lives.

An image of the Rash Decisions App and CMS side by side, a dermataology game developed by Sydney Based Game development studio Chaos Theory Games

We were presented with

The Challenge

Design and develop an app to teach dermatological course content in an engaging, stimulating, and effective manner, which will be measured against traditional teaching methods.

Implement a system for the client to create, update, and maintain the database of questions after the completion of the project.

That became

The Solution

Gamification

Using our game design expertise, we centred the experience around students role playing as practicing doctors, diagnosing and treating fictional patients.

The user is given a patient history, then served a series of questions which expand on their understanding of the condition, and eventually lead to a diagnosis.

An image of the Rash Decisions CMS, a web app developed by Sydney based Game Development studio Chaos Theory Games

Content Management System

We created a web app for the client which made it easy to create and manage the large database of questions.

The questions were delivered to the app in real time, meaning the app did not need to be updated for the client to change or add questions.

Real Images = Real Training

The most useful training tool for students is a large amount of exposure to pre-existing conditions, which improves future diagnostic accuracy.

Through our partnership with the University of Sydney, we had access to a large database of anonymised images and developed a way of classifying them based on dermatological markers.