DIGM Colloquium Series Presents: A Twister, a Pandemic, and a Vision

Join us as we reflect on our journey, milestones, and vision for the future of immersive pediatric care.

Five years ago, amidst the chaos of a tornado and on the cusp of a global pandemic, the founding members of the Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics crossed paths at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. This serendipitous meeting planted the seeds of a pioneering initiative to leverage extended reality (XR) technologies for transformative pediatric healthcare. Today, we celebrate a half-decade of groundbreaking advancements, from virtual reality education to augmented reality clinical tools, aimed at reducing disparities and improving outcomes for youth.

Speakers Bio:

Kimberly Hieftje is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and co-director/co-founder of XRPeds at Yale and the new Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics. For the past 15 years, her research has focused on the development, evaluation, and implementation of health and clinical interventions for youth that utilize XR and game technology. Dr. Hieftje has led teams that have developed game interventions focused on topics including e-cigarette, marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco use prevention, HIV/STI prevention and testing, empowering Black teen girls on their sexual health, bystander intervention, LGBTQ bullying, mental health promotion, and grief/loss of a child. Dr. Hieftje is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Games for Health Journal, the premier journal in the field of serious games for health and clinical applications.

Asher M. Marks, MD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine and practicing pediatric hematologist and oncologist. He is the director of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology and also serves as the director of the Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) cancer program for Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. While his clinical research frequently focuses on the care and treatment of pediatric patients with brain tumors, his role as the director of the AYA program led to the development of and interest in the use of VR for clinical and educational use cases. Along with Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, he co-founded The Yale Center for Immersive Technologies in Pediatrics and the XRPeds lab (xrpeds.org) at Yale Pediatrics.

Host or Publisher Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design