HeartSaver

General Description Half a million New Yorkers have heart disease. How many of them have good access to emergency care in the event of a heart attack? HeartSaver challenges players to save as many lives as possible by routing victims to the best/nearest emergency room.

Technical Aspects: We used Ruby and Google Maps API to store and geocode hospital data and convert into JSON for display. We used JavaScript to implement game interactions and calculate scores, factoring in time (American Heart Association benchmark), location (distance, google maps) and quality of care data (NY Dept. Health). We also used shape files from NY Dept. of City Planning to set boundaries of play to NYC boroughs.

Design: From Sisi's brain to HTML5. Key display elements include the game space (implemented with HTML+CSS, JavaScript, GoogleMaps) and player dashboard (HTML).

Editorial Aspects: Researched prevalence of heart disease in New York, hospital locations, quality of care benchmarks for heart attack victims and the importance of time as a factor in survival rates. Both the game and the data illustrate inequality of access to care and quality of care for New York residents.

Planning: It took three people two days to build rough prototype with the following tasks:

* data research/acquisition
* ruby development
* design and front-end coding
* narrative design and editing

Team Members: Al Shaw, news apps developer
Sisi Wei, news apps developer
Amanda Zamora, senior engagement editor