challenge
Do you know what problems MS patients come across every day? We had not until we got involved in the pioneering project mamsm.pl - HavingMS.com. Commissioned by Gedeon Richter Marketing Polska cooperating with Hill and Knowlton PR agency we accepted the difficult task of constructing an interactive simulation that could make one feel what it is like to suffer from multiple sclerosis [MS].
Multiple Sclerosis (Sclerosis Multiplex - SM) is an autoimmunological disease resulting from an erroneous attack of the immunological system on the tissues of its own organism. The target is the myelin sheath around the neurons in the brain and spinal cord, a sheath that works like an insulation around an electric cable. As a result of damage to the insulation, the nervous system transmits electric impulses to body members either much slower or deforming them on the way, or - not at all. MS usually strikes young people between the 20th and the 40th year of life, with women being afflicted slightly more frequently. It is one of the main causes of disability in the young population.
Our objective was to picture the syndromes of the condition as realistically as possible in order to shock the users and make them conscious of the problem as a result.
methods
Since the very beginning we have been reluctant to call the project a ”game”- the word usually associated with an interactive simulation. In the end, this is no game, but a real problem touching larger and larger share of the population. However, to achieve the result planned, we decided to use the tools most likely to get the user to identify himself with an MS patient.
Website’s visitors have a range of tasks to choose from, each of them showing how difficult everyday activities can become for a person suffering from MS.
The simulation supervised merithorically by an expert neurologist PhD Maciej Maciejowski shows what sight, hearing, balance and movement control impairment may occur in a patient. To illustrate consecutive stages of the disease, the level of tasks’ difficulty increases gradually. Depending on the intensity of MS syndromes, every activity has been accorded a level of disability on the EDSS scale (The Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale). Video clips recorded to mirror the way an MS patient perceives the surrounding world enrich the material, strengthening the overall impression of realism.
results
On her blog, Anna, a 27-year-old patient who has been suffering from an acute MS for 8 years now, comments on our website: ”Would you like to get to know what an MS patient may feel day in day out? Today, I visited a portal that stroke me as exceptionally true. Browsing through it and performing the simulation tasks made me feel like that again. Not all of the syndromes listed I had had, some of them had been less intense, but I felt truly moved… I suppose, the portal is right then”.
