Grendel Games’ journey into Serious Games began with the award-winning Underground and we have been developing Serious Games for Hospitals, Universities and Medical Device manufacturers ever since. The benefits of Serious Games to train hands on skills, teach new ideas and change perceptions are now well validated and with more than 4 billion people globally expected to play games in 2023, including doctors, nurses and patients, we are confident that Serious Games will have an even greater role to play in Healthcare.
Focus on healthcare
Glyn Burtt will focus on our healthcare customers. Glyn graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in Medical and Natural Sciences with a part II in Neuroscience and went on to complete his medical studies at the University of London. After graduation he pursued Surgical Training, returning to East Anglia and Cambridge for his Urology specialist training, also undertaking a period of research in genomics.
Following a medical diagnosis that meant he could no longer pursue his surgical career, he joined Olympus Medical Systems and held roles in product management, marketing, and sales leadership before joining American Medical Systems in marketing and education roles. Most recently he has been the Director of Medical Affairs and Medical Education for the Urology division of Boston Scientific for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and it was in this role that he worked with Grendel Games on two projects – Neon Conduit and a yet to be released game that enables doctors to better appreciate the impact of quality-of-life symptoms on their patients’ daily lives.
A gamer at heart
“I’m so happy to be joining the team at Grendel Games, I’m fifty years of age now and I was the first generation to have microcomputers at home. I had one of the first Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers and spent a lot of my childhood loading games like Jet Set Willy, Atic Atac, Manic Miner and Knight Lore from audio cassette to play on them for hours. So, I’m well aware that people of my age can be avid gamers and that’s shown in the data out there too. My studies of cognition and neuroscience as an undergraduate taught me that we learn best through exploration, play and experimentation and we can see that in the wealth of games that exist – game play and learning are intertwined.
Looking forward
And we can now use Serious games to teach things in medicine and healthcare that otherwise would either require massive investment in high-cost hardware or just be impossible. Smartphones and widespread high speed internet access means that we can put whole worlds and new experiences in the palms of our game players and use those games to train new skills, new ideas and change perceptions. Serious Games are going to boom, especially in healthcare and the arrival of “metaverses” means that gamification has come of age in a way that is going to transform the world for the better. I am delighted to join Grendel, it’s great to be working with so many kind, smart colleagues in a company with shared values and ambitions”.
If you have an idea for a Serious Game in the healthcare arena, or you want to see how Serious Games and Game-Based Learning could solve a problem you have identified or help you create awareness or train on a new product, you can reach Glyn directly at glyn@grendelgames.com. You can also follow him on LinkedIn where he posts regularly on Serious Game related topics.
