GAMIFICATION, THE NEXT LEVEL OF HEALTHCARE?

GAMIFICATION, THE NEXT LEVEL OF HEALTHCARE?

What is gamification?

It’s more than likely that you’ve heard the word “gamification” thrown around in recent

years, and if you’re not sure what it is then here's a quick definition. Gamification is the

idea of turning usually ordinary and mundane tasks and instead making them more

interactive and fun to complete, through the use of elements which are most commonly

associated with gaming.

So what are these elements of gamification you ask? 15-year gamification expert Yu Kai

Chou listed 8 as shown below, see if you can relate the elements to any games you've

played in the past or present;

1. Meaning and calling is the Core Drive where a player believes that he is doing

something greater than himself or he was “chosen” to do something.

2. Development and accomplishment is the internal drive of making progress,

developing skills, and eventually overcoming challenges.

3. Empowerment of creativity and feedback is when users are engaged in a

creative process where they have to repeatedly figure things out and try different

combinations. People not only need ways to express their creativity, but they

need to be able to see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and

respond in turn.

4. Ownership and possession is the drive where users are motivated because they

feel like they own something. When a player feels ownership, they innately want

to make what they own better and own even more.

GAMIFICATION, THE NEXT LEVEL OF HEALTHCARE?

5. Social influence and relatedness, this incorporates all the social elements that

drive people, including: mentorship, acceptance, social responses,

companionship, as well as competition and envy. So essentially when you see a

friend that is amazing at a skill or owns something extraordinary, you become

driven to reach the same level.

6. Scarcity and impatience is the drive of wanting something because you can’t

have it. Many games have Appointment Dynamics within them (come back 2

hours later to get your reward) – the fact that people can’t get something right

now motivates them to think about it all day long.

7. Curiosity and unpredictability is a harmless drive of wanting to find out what

will happen next. If you don’t know what’s going to happen, your brain is

engaged and you think about it often.

8. Loss and avoidance is playing upon people feeling like if they didn’t act

immediately, they would lose the opportunity to act forever.

So why is gamification being talked about?

The reason why gamification has been so successful is due the inclusion of instant

gratification and rewards which are so fiercely craved by human nature. Essentially

gamification plays on the innate human need for instant approval and the desire to be

rewarded for completing tasks. Companies within the last 5 years have been tailoring

their offerings to include the concept of gamification within their products, to increase

consumer retention and participation rates for both on and offline activities. The most

common rewards which are provided by gamification are online in the form of points,

virtual badges, awards and trophies. Once consumers start completing a task, which

could be sending out a referral link to a website, or completing their account with up-to-

date credentials, an award could be received by the user to signify their completion of

the task. This is often the stepping stone which creates the desire to collect as many of

these awards as possible and so users continue to interact and engage with the website

for far longer than they usually would, which is increasingly important in an online world

where distractions are rife and online competition is fierce.

The Entertainment Software Association have stated that:

97% of youth play computer and video games

69% of all heads of households play computer and video games

40% of all gamers are women

1 out of 4 gamers are over the age of 50

The average player is 35 years old and has been playing for 12 years

Most gamers expect to continue playing games for the rest of their lives

GAMIFICATION, THE NEXT LEVEL OF HEALTHCARE?

So if you consider from these statistics just how large the market is, you can see that we

are almost segregating a vast wealth of time, cognitive effort and energy away from

society. Some companies have tried and succeeded in driving this effort back into

productive means, for example the University of Washington created a game called

FoldIt. This was an online collaborative puzzle game which revolved around discovering

the architecture of proteins within a structure, specifically within the M-PMV AIDS

causing virus. This game allowed users to compete to find an archetype which matched

the specification provided by a scientific researcher. The game amassed over 240,000

“players”, and resulted in a solution for the structure M-PMV in just ten days. What’s

interesting to note is that some of the top scientific researchers and PhD students around

the world had been trying to decipher this protein structure for over 15 years. Somehow

now it’s not too far fetched to envisage a game developer receiving a future Nobel Prize

is it?

Gamification in healthcare

This cultural phenomenon is raising eyebrows from all industries, and one of the most

active industries to get involved in recent years is healthcare. For any Samsung

consumers, you will likely be familiar with SHealth which is an app which Samsung have

started distributing as standard with their mobile phones and tablets. Although primarily

an app which was created to track your exercise habits, SHealth has since expanded to

track sleep, diet, heart rate, stress and even the concentration of oxygen within your

blood. SHealth uses notifications to retain the user’s participation in addition to

implementing a badge and reward system which results in users obtaining a shiny medal

or trophy for completing 60 minutes of exercise per day, in order to incentivize healthy

habits.

Plant Nanny is a game developed by FourDesire with the intention of aiding those who

struggle to get their recommended 2-3 litres of water per day. It uses the concept of a

flower which gets watered every time you register that you drink a glass of water,

starting off with your level 1 Dandelion until you have a beautiful blossoming plant. With

over 3,000,000 downloads, Plant Nanny seems to be tackling an issue for many members

of society, in a very effective way.

Is gamification the future of healthcare?

In what is increasingly becoming the most relevant medium of the 21st century, the

future could consist of games which aim to address and treat depression, anxiety, obesity

and attention deficit disorder. Games could be used to help to reduce health

complications or even to be as simple as to feel more engaged and socially connected

for the elderly population, this cultural phenomenon could quite literally be the next

level of patient engagement.

More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the

United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. Could this

GAMIFICATION, THE NEXT LEVEL OF HEALTHCARE?

massive market be used to aid in awareness, prevention or even treatment of some

health issues?

http://www.idrmedical.com/gamification-next-level-healthcare/

IDR Medical is an international healthcare marketing consultancy and a trusted advisor to the

world’s leading medical device and pharmaceutical companies. We work on a wide variety of

projects spanning the health spectrum using our distinct capabilities that integrate market

research, business analysis and strategic problem solving.

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