Two against the wolf
Taking a playful approach to raising awareness of serious diseases and opening up new channels for patient communication: the app “Fighting Lupus” developed by Sandra Jeleazcov and Benedikt Morschheuser.
“Imagine a girl: young, lively, incredibly talented. Suddenly she becomes ill: LUPUS, a cute name, but a brutal autoimmune disease.” These are the opening words in a video about the new “Fighting Lupus” app that immediately grabs your attention. Lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that was thought to be incurable – until the first patient succeeded in overcoming the disease after a treatment involving cells from her own body at Uniklinikum Erlangen in 2021.
The app takes this real heroic story and transforms it into virtual reality, using a game to raise awareness of possible treatments and disease mechanisms. “We are opening up entirely new channels for patient communication, as the app allows patients to experience what is happening in their body together with the team of doctors treating them,” explains Sandra Jeleazcov, who is in charge of knowledge management at Department of Medicine 3 at Uniklinikum Erlangen.
Just how innovative the app is has been proved by it winning several awards, including the Deutscher Digital Award and the Deutsche Preis für Onlinekommunikation 2024.
Fighting Lupus – the App
CASTLE VR will become an integral part of treatment with the body’s own CAR-T cells. An encounter between patients and doctors will take place during the VR treatment process, but in real time and live. CASTLE VR is an innovative learning method in the field of patient communication to experience the molecular mechanisms before, during and after therapy.
The benefits of educational games
Jeleazcov had the idea for the app after speaking to patients and their relatives. “It became clear again and again during conversations that they all had a great need for information, but there was a wide range of different preferred means of communication.” She thought about it, remembered the positive experiences they had had with the learning games INFLAMMANIA 1+2 (see box) and contacted Benedikt Morschheuser. The assistant professor of Information Systems at FAU heads the gamification research group at the Institute of Information Systems and is a great fan of game-based learning.
“Fun is just another word for learning” is his favorite quote from Raph Koster, a famous game designer. Morschheuser is convinced that digital games have a huge potential for passing on medical knowledge in a motivating, tangible and understandable way. In his research, he works on developing principles to gain a better understanding of how various gaming elements work. Together with doctors, Jeleazcov and Morschheuser developed the innovative communication approach for “Fighting Lupus”, and the Cologne-based company “onliveline” implemented it for them.
The app is a new form of consultation or conversation with patients and will be incorporated into treatment in future within the context of a clinical study. Sandra Jeleazcov and Benedikt Morschheuser won the award
FAU Innovation Prize 2024 for their project.
Want even more gamification?
A wild chase through our body, battles against dangerous intruders and tricky battles against spies and traitors – all that is offered by INFLAMMANIA 1+2, the two serious games that were also developed at FAU. The educational games can be played on the computer, smartphone or tablet and explain mechanisms that take place in our bodies in the case of chronic inflammatory diseases. Allergies, chronic infections and autoimmune diseases also affect many children and adolescents, either directly or in their family.
The games are a fun way of helping to recognize symptoms at an early stage and seek help. INFLAMMANIA 2 won third place in the German children’s software prize TOMMI 2022 in the category “apps”.
Author: Elke Zapf
This article is part of the FAU magazine
Innovation, diversity and passion: Those are the three guiding principles of our FAU, as stated in our mission statement. At FAU, we live these guiding principles every day in all that we do – in research, in teaching and when it comes to sharing the knowledge created at our university with society.
This, the second issue of our FAU magazine, underlines all of the above: It shows researchers who tirelessly keep pushing the boundaries of what has been believed to be possible. It introduces students who work together to achieve outstanding results for their FAU, talks about teaching staff who pass on their knowledge with infectious enthusiasm and creativity. And it reports back on members of staff with foresight and a talent for getting to the crux of the matter who are dedicated to improving the (research) infrastructure at FAU as well as people in key positions who are there for their university and are committed to its research location.
Download: FAU Magazin (PDF) Read more articles online