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• Computer game designers try health promotion  

At Champlain College and other academic institutions around the country, designers are looking for a better role to play, developing games aimed at helping people improve their health in a variety of ways, be it getting diabetics to eat right or leading Parkinson's patients through rehabilitation.

Amanda Crispel, program director of game design, game art and animation at Champlain and CEO of a startup company, Hoozinga Game Media, is working with the Vermont Health Department to promote a new game intended to help smokers quit.

"Khemia," which is Latin for "alchemy," is designed to give smokers looking to kick the habit something to do with their minds and hands for the five to ten minutes a cigarette craving typically lasts, Crispel said.

"It's behavioral modification," she said. "You have set up a behavioral pattern, a set of neurons that says when this happens, that happens."

"Khemia" is designed to disrupt the pattern associated with smoking and, in conjunction with other tools such as nicotine gum, reduce those cravings over time.

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