Gamification in Healthcare and Medicine: It Isn't Just About Playing Games Anymore

Long gone are the days where video games were only popular in the obese nerdy teenager demography who would rather play marathons of “Halo” instead of going out to find a date.  As of December 2009, 69% of all households had some type of video console or personal computer.  The average gamer was a 34 year old male, 40% of all gamers are females, and a staggering 26% of people aged 50 and above play video games (1.)  Based on these shocking statistics, it is no surprise that video games have crept into the medical realm as physicians utilize the current trend in order to help improve patient care.  

Video games are a perfect platform to target patient’s behavior, improve their education, and can be programmed to cover a vast array of different health-related topics.  Physicians can also benefit by being able to pass out demo CDs in order to educate the patients better as well as train the doctor himself to learn the most current material without needing a newer version of a textbook or attending another drug company meeting at the local steakhouse (maybe the changes are not all good.)  

Some of the most successful applications for video games in medicine early on were games designed to educate children about diabetes.  “Packy and Malton” was a successful educational video game that was developed by WaveQuest for the Super Nintendo System.  Its aim was to improve self-care behavior in children with juvenile diabetes.  In this game, a group of pesky rodents enter a summer camp where the two diabetic elephants, Packy and Malton, are campers during summer holidays.  These rats steal all the food and it is up to the two elephants to find the healthy foods while remembering to check their blood for sugar throughout their adventures and taking insulin when needed.  This fun game for kids not only demonstrated the importance of watching their own sugar levels, but had tremendous results on the overall health of the gamers.

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Treating diabetes in the youth is one thing but video games have also found their way into the iPads of the elderly as a way to stave off the effects of aging.  “Stimart Scarlett” by Dynseo is a popular platform that presents memory puzzles and trivia questions for older users in order to improve memory capacity.  This is essential considering the trend in our population dynamics.  In 2003, only 12% of the U.S. population was aged 65 or older compared to the projected level of over 20% of the population by 2030. As this generation ages, there is a guaranteed correlation in the number of Alzheimer's cases that will inevitably follow.  Early findings in cohort analysis studies suggest that elderly patients playing these games can fight off the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease by over 2 years resulting in trillions of dollars saved in the healthcare sector.  These elderly patients will have higher quality of lives and amazingly enough, it could be all from playing a video game an hour a day (3.)

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 Drug representatives who come to medical offices already present all material to physicians on easy-to-use tablets.  These powerpoints are typically accompanied by some type of game of trivia challenge at the end to ensure that the doctor is aware of all the uses of the medication as well as some of the most common side effects of this drug.  These video games mimic the popular app “Quizmania”  but with a medical theme.  Doctors are given account information from their drug reps. and they are required to complete a specified number of challenges a year in order to get “credit hours” for their licensure.  I have seen these games myself and realize the effectiveness of them on one simple principle.  Doctors are extremely competitive in most cases and would enjoy beating rival physicians on any platform possible.  Researchers have found that physicians who play a few rounds of these games typically have better results in the therapies of the patients.  The patients were documented to also have fewer additional visits due to side effects improving the quality of care on both ends of the spectrum.

A Product That Encourages You To Have A More Active Lifestyle

A great resource that has been introduced in our society in the last decade has been the Fitbit.  This is a wonderful product that encourages users to have a more active lifestyle.  Not only does it track steps and calories burned for the day, but it also has a feature where you can join a group and compete against them in order to receive bonuses or some type of prize at the end of the week.  I learned about this from my sister who implemented these in a medical practice she is managing.  All staff members were given these wristbands and then at the end of the week, whoever has exercised the most will receive an all-expense paid dinner at a fancy local restaurant.  She attests that this was a wonderful way to get everyone in the office moving and involve everyone from the doctors to the secretaries out front.  These watches create a playful yet competitive environment and push users to walk the extra block in order to be leading the group for the day.  Why not let the competition bring out the best in us if the end result is a more active user that can ward off diseases like diabetes and peripheral artery disease later on in life?  

The last practical application worth mentioning in the medical realm encompasses the use of these video games as a means of training physicians.  

 The reason for this is simply that laparoscopies are very similar to control sticks used to move characters around the screen.  Instead of having Mario jump for coins though, these controls are being used to isolate tissue for biopsy or to cauterize vasculature prior to extraction of organs like in gallbladder removals.  Surgical residents in some centers around the world are being taught how to do these operations by doing trial operations on this video game platform.  The monitors depict a virtual patient and the resident is obligated to do everything from sterilizing the site to closing the patient at the end after the surgery has been performed.  This is an ideal environment to learn how to do these surgeries because it can be quite difficult to find the operating time when competing against other surgeons or residents for the same practice opportunities if a doctor is training in a rural hospital.  This module also provides an opportunity for the physician to make a mistake without risking a patient’s life.

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Overall, the gamification of the medical realm is a necessary change in my opinion.  If nearly 70% of Americans have some type of platform to play video games, it would be a missed opportunity to not try to utilize these available resources to educate our patients.  Patients respond much better to interactive software compared to lectures from the physician on what they must do to improve their health which will educate them more on potential side effects from medications as well as learning about their overall condition.  Having patients who are better informed will vastly improve their therapies because this is a huge factor in determining if patients stick with their treatment plans.  

I can’t tell you how many times I have had a patient walk into my office telling me he decided to stop his medications early because he was feeling better or if he felt that the medications were not helping him.  If a patient is given supplemental learning material to improve his knowledge, he will understand the importance of these medications and complete the prescription knowing that it is dangerous if he does not.  There is also opportunities to train physicians without the risk of injuring patients in reality.  All physicians should consider implementing video games into their practice.