Gamification in Healthcare: Advantages, Examples, Role
In order to adequately implement gamification in healthcare, since more people live life on the go, you have to deliver in-demand solutions so that you can receive manifold benefits. Higher end-user retention, improved user experience, patient engagement — all can be received within the health app, for example, a tracker for medicine.
In this article, we will explore well-being outcomes, the growing role of healthcare gamification, essential benefits and examples. Irresistibly gamified apps help patients to improve their lifestyle and facilitate behavior change, incorporating gaming software with outstanding functionality. Let’s understand the nitty-gritty behind this topic.
What is gamification in healthcare?
Talking about related to healthcare niche activities, we can say that gamification, with its principles and mechanics, allows for engaging and motivating individuals — patients — manage their health and wellness.
How is it conducted? — the process involves applying typical gaming indicators and patches, like points for finished marathons, badges, levels, challenges and awards to non-game content with healthcare as a domaining niche. Keep in mind that the leading goal is to promote healthy habits, improve treatment adherence, offer better outcomes.
Health gamification can be represented in various forms — for example you may develop a mobile application, wearable devices, digitalized platforms etc. Thereby, they have the same purpose to develop a user-friendly environment and increase patient participation in improving clinical outcomes.
Factors that help gamification in healthcare keep a high level of motivation and loyalty.
The tricky moment is that gamification can be implemented for various purposes, from a simple progress bar to track habits to complex systems for patients with diseases like Alzheimer’s that allow tracking their physical state.
Remember that all the mobile apps or online platforms are developed to motivate end-users to start caring about their health. It’s a complex strategy of gaming elements integration within tiresome activities motivating users to follow health dominion — using software for workouts, diet following, self-management, control over the intake of medications, etc.
Talking about components of gamification in healthcare you can implement various techniques from storytelling to implementation of levels for players and progress bars, all that you need according to your end-user expectations, pain points and vision. Putting into practice these methods you simultaneously increase your brand awareness.
The core principles that are followed by companies that develop healthcare software for gamification is that they create user-friendly tailored solutions based on user experience research. So that your solution will be in-demand on the market and 100% meet patients’ expectations winning customer loyalty.
The growing role of gamification in the healthcare sector
As it’s being said in the market research, gamification within the healthcare industry reached USD 9.1 billion in 2022 with the CAGR of 13.13% until 2031 and the role of gamification is steadily growing, revolutionizing patient engagement, health outcomes and more.
Key elements that influence the growth of gamification in the healthcare.
For now, let’s overview key factors contributing to the gamification’s increasing importance:
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Patient engagement. Let’s start with tangible techniques you can use to engage end-users — rewards for completed challenges, social interactions with their friends or relatives, an option of making friends with the same goals.
Overall, you have to represent the possibility of adopting healthier behaviors for your customers, adhere to treatment plans, track health metrics, and more.
- Patient behavior change. Using this powerful tool to promote changes in user behaviour you incentivize desired health-related actions — a game-like experience allows patients to stay consistent in exercising, stick to a healthy diet by counting calories, quit smoking with special trackers, manage stress and sleep schedule and more.
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Patient education level and accessibility. Healthcare gamification is all about making it easier for customers to learn about their health condition and preventive measures are more engaging and accessible. For example you are able to provide interactive small games inside of the app or use simulations.
In our cutting-edge digital world, you are even able to implement VR (Virtual Reality) technique that helps understand complex medical concepts, procedures which leads to improved results for medical professionals and patients.
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Personalization for patients. An emerging trend that stands for customized game experiences, target goals related to healthcare, improved patient motivation and more. Thereby you are representing unique games for each customer based on cut-throat industry requirements.
You can also implement various interventions like customized goals, adaptive challenges, tailored feedback, preference-based content, contextual relevance, integrations with third-party apps and platforms etc.
- Data analysis. Gamified platforms have to store and manage numerous data — from user preferences to health outcomes. Why is it essential to analyze and gain in-depth insights? — you can gain information about areas for intervention, optimize product delivery strategies.
Talking about gamification in healthcare examples we can say that cutting-edge applications offer opportunities to manage health conditions so creating and adopting strategies for diverse healthcare solutions are a must.
Since society is increasing in consciousness alone there’s an increasing need in digitalized technologies which can be reached by the patients’ smartphones or tablets. The global gamification market size reached $3.15 billion in 2022 and it will be increased since more people need specialized software for their conditions.
According to the same report more people will use applications for the management of chronic diseases since it motivates patients to take care of their health and make it efficient and cost-effective.
Being all-embracing our list of essentials for the healthcare sector is driven by the ability to engage your patients, drive their changes in behaviors, improve outcomes and benefits, enhance the user experience for every patient that will use your application or online platform.
Why is healthcare gamification important?
Now that we are on the same page in understanding the growing role of the healthcare industry and gamification, let’s reveal what are the leading benefits you can receive involving tailored experiences to individual needs and preferences, engaging users to give health the primary priority.
Benefits of implementing gamification elements to the healthcare digital products.
— Better user engagement. People are more likely to invest in their health if the path to becoming a better person is gamified and they can track progress. Since online platforms and applications are constantly vying for patients’ attention, you have to address the challenge of getting them involved in recovering process.
Patients will definitely spend more time exploring your levels, badges, challenges and other healthcare gamification interactions you can represent within your healthcare solution. Creating a sense of community and enjoyment, you are able to make users participation more fun and they will return to use your digital platform more and more.
How to accomplish this task by making your solution visually appealing and useful? — offer meaningful rewards and incentives along with positive reinforcement. You can also incorporate a sense of progression and learning using quizzes, interactive tutorials with the usage of VR reality as an example.
— Behavior change. It’s all about helping customers to become better and healthier people, promoting positive habits with the usage of a tracking system if talking about examples. You can offer narrative-driven gamification in healthcare experiences to inspire customers in changes — appealing to their emotions, aspirations and values.
Habit changes are also about progress tracking over time so that you have to represent tools for visualizing their achievements within various metrics depending on your end-users’ preferences. You will be providing self-awareness, allowing patients to track their calories, steps taken, days without smoking etc.
— Remote monitoring. It’s a combination of continuous monitoring of health factors and gamified elements that allow doctors and patients to track symptoms and collect real-time health parameters. Let’s start with an example — your patient has to input data about their condition and with gamification, they are able to make it an achievable challenge.
Regular check-ins mean users can receive a special badge, if they take medication on time — they receive bonuses that can be interchangeable with real prizes. Keep in mind that your leading goal is to engage patients and motivate them to monitor their health around the clock.
— Community support and communication. Healthcare gamification incorporates the ability to share patients’ results within a community facilitating peer support among the community members. For example, many healthcare apps for tracking calories provide an opportunity to share your meals and receive comments.
Patients can find a helping hand in the nick of time, sharing their experiences and participating in groups and activities like various challenges. Fostering a sense of community and belonging to a group of people makes it mentally easier to overcome patients’ problems and receive support.
You can also implement something like a leader dashboard using gamification so that people can compare their performance and stay motivated.
3 gamification examples in healthcare
In its most basic form, you can overview healthcare applications that help users to improve their health condition Most of these apps operate on basic features with adding unique functionalities depending on the users’ needs and expectations.
You must account that your primary goal is to engage patients and provide them with a reliable solution — we will consider three leading types of healthcare gamified apps, you can implement VR technologies or training simulations if that’s what your end-users need. For now let’s see broad strokes of how outcomes are improved with gamification:
Physical activity tracking apps
The most common examples of gamification in healthcare stand for implementing techniques like leader dashboards for competitions, badges, points, challenges with friends, rewards for meeting milestones. For example you can develop a special app that will count workouts and provide a tracker that is compared to the users’ friends and community overall.
Example of a physical activity app.
Your leading mission is to engage patients, providing them with robust functionality that allows them to track their progress, receive rewards like for hitting daily step goals or for exercising for a certain number of consecutive days.
Many healthcare gamification applications feature social and competitive elements, which makes it easier to participate together with friends and family reinforcing their commitment to staying active on the app. Physical activity tracking apps also have personalized coaching using machine learning algorithms to provide personalized content.
On balance, you can implement personalized experiences for all the patients according to their needs using cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning. These apps incentivize users to make better decisions and healthy choices while maintaining their workout routines and receiving personalized guidance taking control over an active lifestyle.
Educational games for health professionals
Such apps have emerged as effective tools for enhancing learning widely used by students and doctors to improve their knowledge in the healthcare niche. These games involve healthcare gamification principles for immersive learning experiences so that students can acquire their knowledge, practice skills etc.
You can provide customers with simulation-based learning experiences that mimic real-time clinical scenarios. Thereby you are offering a safe space to practice most challenging surgical procedures so that students, nurses and physicians have controlled environments to receive hands-on experience.
Example of an educational app for heath professionals.
In addition to the named benefits, such gamification can be used for learning complex material for example with flashcards that help learn medical concepts.
Rehabilitation and therapy games
We can talk primarily about gamification examples in healthcare in physical therapy and software that allows to recover from injuries effectively, improve mobility and coordination, involve activities like reaching, lifting, walking or else. What practices of gamification can be implemented? — challenges, rewards, progress tracking.
Example of a therapy app.
You can even implement VR technologies using immersive virtual reality to simulate actions in real-time mode — cooking, walking, shopping and more according to the patient’s needs.
All-embracing, all of the techniques are innovative and cutting-edge promoting recovery and health condition control. We have named only three leading gamification in healthcare examples that help to engage users and promote healthy behaviors.
You can implement any type of solution and method with a proper software developer covering all the end-users’ needs in healthcare apps or online platforms.
Summing up
As has been pointed out, gamification involves applying game-design elements for non-game content, motivating user behavior to switch, change towards healthier lifestyles, management of health conditions. All-embracing gamification holds promise to revolutionize the healthcare niche making related activities more engaging.
With the confines of our gamification for healthcare guide, we uncovered what gamification is in terms of healthcare, how it works within engagement and behavior change, and considered three leading examples of software that makes health-related activities more effective, ultimately used to provide the best outcomes for patient’s lives.
If you would like to reach out to a company with a proven track record of gamification in medicine, contact Limeup experts. We are here to help and cover your business needs in healthcare solutions with the most customizable gamification.