Welcome to Iatrogenic Games

Providing evidence-based practice information and an online learning environment for studying all-things pharmacology.
(Pathophysiology, too.)

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Projects in Process

Here's a preview of what's been keeping us up an night.

The Pharms

Meet "The Pharms", they walk among us! Using the augmented reality capability of your smartphone, you'll place quirky characters representing some of the most commonly prescribed medications into the real world. Flashcards have never felt so alive. You'll test your knowledge & recall of essential drug facts (e.g., generic & trade names, pharmacological classes, mechanisms of action, therapeutic uses, and major side effects), as each Pharm comes with its own flashcard of drug information. It's an engaging study tool for learning your meds. Can you extend the analogies even further? Available on iOS & Android.

Welcome to Pharmville

Pharmville is a resource manager-city builder video game in which the primary nonplayable characters (“the Pharms”) are anthropomorphized versions of actual medications who’ve been recruited to keep the neighboring city, El Paciente, shipshape and running smoothly. Working as the newly hired city manager, you must get to know the Pharms—their roles, functions, and personalities—and deploy them as needed to address El Paciente’s growing, and increasingly complicated, problems and catastrophes. If the city thrives under your direction, you'll be memorialized as the greatest city manager of all time.

Our Approach

We use storytelling to engage and educate. Drugs are introduced as anthropomorphic characters, each a member of discreet family units (pharmacological classes), working alone or in consort to treat, diagnose, and prevent a menagerie of metaphorical maladies. We've developed an approach that's fun and engaging while staying true to the underlying science.

Through both video games and gamified learning environments, players develop a clinically relevant understanding of the therapeutic uses, mechanisms of actions, drug-drug interactions, and major side effects of commonly prescribed drugs, as well as a pharmacologic basis for evidence-based therapeutics.