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Serious Games : From Training to Market Research in Pharmaceutical Sector: how to Manage Objections and Highlight the Distorsions in Communication

28th February 2008, Acceleratore d'Impresa del Politecnico di Milano

On 28 February 2008, imaginary in collaboration with E.M.&M., organised a free workshop to illustrate the potential of the Serious Games in the training of pharmaceutical promotion and sales networks, as well as for market research. Past experiences and concrete examples were presented. Particular attention was paid to the application of this type of simulation to highlight distortions in communication and deal with effectively with objections.

Conference “Star Rating: a British example of excellence. Introduction to the new quality measurement in care homes

imaginary organized the conference “Star Rating: a British example of excellence. Introduction to the new quality measurement in care homes”.
Together with Acceleratore d'Impresa del Politecnico di Milano, Fondazione Politecnico and I.Re.F. (Regional Institute for Training in the Public Administration), and with the cooperation of SCIE (Social Care Institute for Excellence), imaginary presented the Star Rating Assessment Tool as a new evaluation system for the quality of care homes to the administrators of Italian care homes, to the national healthcare sector and to other stakeholders.

Star Rating Tool

In the UK, the Commission for Social Care Inspection is responsible for the inspection, measurement and reporting of quality and performance in the 18,000+ Residential Care Homes in the UK. English Local Authorities alone spend over 20 billion per annum buying places in such homes. To help with choice CSCI has recently introduced a quality assessment system using a 'Star Rating' for the overall performance of a Care Home, ranging from 0 to 3 stars, like that used for hotels and restaurants. The method of evaluation looks at a range of 38 performance indicators over 8 'Outcome' areas, focusing on the actual experience of the service users in the Home.
The Star Rating Assessment Tool has been developed to assist managers of Care Homes to self-assess performance across the Outcomes, and see a list  of prioritised competencies associated with each occupational role within the home. It can record changes over time, and can be used to simulate a desired star rating to identify and prioritize potential or actual gaps in competencies that need to be filled in order to achieve the desired results.

The Star Rating Tool and imaginary's role

imaginary is specialised in the design of Serious Games and simulation tools. Together with SCIE  Social Care Institute for Excellence, imaginary is a partner of the research project PROLIX, financed by the European Commission within the Sixth Research Framework Programme.
The idea of a cooperation between SCIE and imaginary started within the PROLIX project: SCIE identified the competencies needed to carry out any activity at the care homes (i.e. care of users health, recreational activities, quality of the staff), that will be assessed by the inspectors.
Starting from this point, imaginary designed a simulation dashboard that can be used for several aims: the inspector can quickly insert the assessment of each area to obtain the star rating of the home. The care home's manager will be able to simulate an inspection and to self-assess the activities of the home or the competencies of the staff, in order to obtain a support to the decision making concerning the staff.