Second Life helps save, improve lives -- InformationWeek

Second Life is a perfect place where hardly anyone gets old or sick. Nevertheless, some healthcare providers are using the virtual world to solve real-world healthcare problems.

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Judi Smith heads up training in Second Life for Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Here she is with her Second Life avatar, "Judi Carver."

In Chicago, Children's Memorial Hospital uses Second Life, with its three-dimensional software representations of landscapes, buildings, and vehicles, for disaster preparedness training, to show employees how to evacuate patients in an emergency. Meanwhile, disabled people use Second Life for peer support, helping one another with the emotional, social, and other problems they encounter in the real world. In both cases, people in Second Life interact using avatars, software representations of themselves or a character of their choosing...