James Cameron's sci-fi movie Avatar centers on a Marine who, through a nifty bit of futuristic technology, is able to slip into a virtual body and explore an extraterrestrial world.
Here on earth, with today's existing technology, military members and their families are being given the chance to try out avatars of their own, thanks to a unique partnership between Linden Lab's Second Life and Humana Military Healthcare Services (HMHS), which is the managed care support contractor for the southern region of the Department of Defense's TRICARE military health system.
The newly launched TRIWORLD is the first virtual world designed specifically and exclusively for military personnel. HMHS beneficiaries (active duty servicemen and women, retirees, and their families) can access a "closed world" of Second Life at humana-military.com. There in that virtual world they (via their avatars) can meet up and communicate with each other -- all while learning about their TRICARE benefits.
HMHS vice president and COO Orie Mullen confesses that the project is "some cyberspace that I don't traditionally wander around in." But, he says, "this is something our young folks in the military appear to have some appetite for."
John Lester, Second Life's lead evangelist for market development says the platform "has a great deal of emotional bandwidth. It feels more real than a phone call or an e-mail. And, unlike video conferencing, you have a real sense of place. You have people coming together in a common space. It's visual, it's auditory, and it really collapses geography in a way that really keeps families together and supportive of each other."
TRIWORLD certainly does have a unique "sense of place." The online realm has five different virtual settings. There's a welcome and orientation center where users can learn about Second Life and access information about their health benefits. Also, there's a "media and conference center that offers private meeting and press rooms, including an area to watch and listen to TRICARE educational briefings.
But there's also a replica desert military base and battlefield so service members can show their families what their daily life is like overseas. And a residential neighborhood, custom made for mini golf and picnics, so those service members can be reminded of home while reconnecting with their families. There's even a tropical island for windsurfing, hang-gliding, jet skiing, and walks on the beach.
"With the multiple deployments that folks were experiencing, having to go back one, two and three times, we dreamed up something that we thought would relieve some tension, and create some fun," says Mullen. "We wanted to provide things that help take the stressors away." But the aim was also to enable greater independence for HMHS beneficiaries. "If you want to find out about your eligibility, there's ways to do that," says Mullen. "Want to find out about your claims status or referrals? There's ways to do that. We hope it creates this engagement where [users] take it upon themselves to interact with us and do business over the Web whenever they want to do it."
Humana isn't the first payer to partner with Second Life. In 2008, Cigna started using the program for an initiative that sought to communicate health education information. "We did a pilot a year and a half ago, which was relatively small scale," says Cigna spokesperson Mark Slitt. "We've been considering doing additional larger-scale pilots, but I don't know if there is a fixed plan to do that."
One of the issues, he says, is that online social media is constantly evolving. Two years ago, Second Life was all the rage. Now, "everybody's all atwitter about Twitter. The landscape has changed and there's more to consider. We're still doing some research to determine whether Second Life is the right venue for this purpose."
But for the military and their families, any extra medium that fosters communication with loved ones is a boon. (More than 1,000 signed up before any advertising, says Mullen. Just one day after the marketing campaign began, there was a 30 percent jump in users.)
"Anybody who is separated from their family and loved ones," Lester reasons, "is looking for ways to connect – for anything that helps you feel closer to people."