Gamification in healthcare

There are many different means of gamification that can help users to increase their motivation. These include challenges, team tasks and rewards. A reward system in the form of bonus points is also extremely helpful. Another aspect of increasing motivation is persistence in completing daily missions or climbing up the leaderboard.

One of the most popular mobile games, “Pokémon Go”, has helped to get more people out and about. Pokémon Go is a geolocation game and is designed to calculate distances traveled by the player in order to unlock achievements in the game. This includes, for example, hatching an egg. You can find out more about “Pokémon Go” in the article “What is Pokémon GO? - 3 questions, 3 answers”.

Although the game was not designed to encourage people to run, that is exactly what happened. Even young people, who nowadays often spend most of their time in front of the PC or console, were “forced” to go out.

There are now apps for chronically ill people that are designed to help them cope better with their everyday life with an illness. The aim is to promote health-conscious behavior.
One example of this is the “MySugr” app for diabetes sufferers. It contains a diary with motivational messages and allows important therapy data to be recorded at a glance. The app can also be synchronized with measuring devices.

Nowadays, apps can encourage people to take better care of their health. Gamification is a helpful tool because people often lack the motivation to exercise regularly. This is also demonstrated by the successful game “Pokémon Go”, which has already encouraged millions of people to exercise more. It should be noted that this was not the original aim of the game. Gamification can also make everyday life easier for chronically ill people by using apps to remind them of important appointments or save therapy data.