Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, and Dr Gary Smith, professor of Population Biology and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, study the spread of infectious diseases using computer simulations, and while acknowledging that people act differently in real-life, suggest that a recent epidemic in World of Warcraft provides a useful model for observational research. Professor Fefferman explains that the involvement of real people with a real motivation to take the disease seriously (it could kill off their character, which they've spent a lot of time developing) led to a diversity of responses to the epidemic, providing clues to how people might react in real-life. Looking at how people behaved in the online game bridges the gap between studying behavior in historical real-world epidemics and using computer simulations of disease spreading in virtual populations whose behavior is mathematically modeled.

Note: Mitch Resnick, Vanessa Collela and Eric Klopfer used wearable “Thinking Tags” and PDAs to simulate the spread of a virus in experimenting with the educational use of virtual and augmented reality games and embodied participatory simulations. See Participatory Simulations: Building Collaborative Understanding through Immersive Dynamic Modeling and The Virus PDA Game.

Also see Who Is Sick?, a user-generated epidemiology map.