Gamification is probably something you have heard about in various industries or use cases. It involves borrowing elements or concepts from traditional games, such as points, coins, progress bars, or leaderboards. Gamification as a concept has been around for a while. However, it is now gaining popularity across many niches and industries.

In healthcare, a software development company can use gamification elements to turn health-related tasks into fun activities that users are more likely to actively engage with. This has been proven effective at motivating positive behaviors and driving better patient outcomes.

In this article, we will explore the applications of gamification in healthcare, its features, benefits, and notable examples.

Gamification in healthcare involves applying gaming elements such as points, leaderboards, and progress bars to healthcare apps, platforms, and wearables.
Several gamification mechanics and design principles can be incorporated into a typical healthcare application to motivate users and boost engagement.
Gamification in healthcare can be implemented with different goals, including behavioral modification, educating users, promoting social features, and community engagement.
Gamification can help patients with medication adherence, education, and habit modification while also helping health service providers improve their productivity, collaboration, and training outcomes.

What Is Gamification in Healthcare?

Before we dive deeper into the features and benefits of gamification in healthcare, let’s start by examining what is gamification and how it works.

In a nutshell, gamification involves using game elements and game design techniques outside of a traditional gaming context. Some of these game design techniques include points, badges, leaderboards, and challenges.

Gamification in mobile apps is meant to engage people, motivate them, and stimulate them to act toward achieving a desired behavior or goal. Gamification is essentially an attempt to make a boring activity more fun. While this is nothing new in many mobile apps (where users complete tasks to earn rewards), it is still a relatively new concept in more serious niches like healthcare.

Key Healthcare Gamification Features and Design Principles

There are a number of gamification mechanics and design principles that can be incorporated into gamified healthcare apps. The mechanics refer to the specific features that users interact with. Design principles, on the other hand, are the emotional, social, and psychological factors that shape or motivate user experiences. When it comes to incorporating these in healthcare contexts, the possibilities are rather limitless. One can implement these features individually or combine them for greater effectiveness.

Game Mechanics

Points – Points are the most common reward systems built into gamified experiences. Healthcare providers can leverage these features to motivate users to collect points by engaging with the app or completing tasks. Users derive intrinsic satisfaction and bragging rights. In some cases, points can also be redeemed for more tangible prizes.
Badges – There may be a couple of badges waiting for users to complete some levels, achieve certain milestones, or upon other actions (e.g., recharging energy with a purchase of coins).
Streaks – Gamified healthcare apps can tap into the natural urge for consistency and the fear of missing out by encouraging users to maintain a streak. Daily check-ins and task completions help users maintain a streak. Additionally, the longer the streak, the more likely users are to maintain it.
Challenges – Humans love to solve problems and overcome challenges. Gamified healthcare apps can get users to complete challenges to level up, earn points, or get instant rewards. In some cases, the system adjusts the difficulty of these challenges to match the user’s real-time performance or behavior patterns. This keeps the experience challenging yet attainable.
Narratives – Interactive storytelling can be used to frame a user’s journey on a healthcare app in a way that makes it more adventurous. The experience may incorporate storytelling elements such as characters or avatars, goals, milestones, plot twists, and surprises to give the experience more meaning.

Design Principles

Personalization – Customized game experiences tailored to the user’s goals, motivation, and unique behavior patterns tend to be more engaging than generic experiences. While this does not mean that you have to build unique games for each user, data collected from users and feedback from tracking their actions can help personalize the gaming experience. This motivates them to participate more actively.
Social Proof – Healthcare providers can promote user engagement by transforming solitary tasks or routines into group efforts. The shared experience not only promotes consistency but also helps build a sense of camaraderie and accountability. Social elements such as competitions, collaboration, leaderboards, social batches, and so on can help make the healthcare journey less isolating.
Intrinsic Motivation – In addition to external rewards, apps may provide users with inherent reasons to find the gamified experience more enjoyable or satisfying. These are known as intrinsic motivations. Things like curiosity, interest, satisfaction, self-determination theory, and a sense of purpose can inspire users to engage more actively with an application.

Types of Gamification in Healthcare

So, what ways can gamification be used in the healthcare industry? Gamification in healthcare has different goals or delivery formats, which determine how they’ll be implemented. The following are some of the gamification types that healthcare providers can incorporate into digital healthcare experiences.

Behavioral gamification for habit change – Many gamification platforms focus on encouraging users to take control of their own health by making daily decisions that are beneficial to them. Examples include physical activity trackers, nutrition apps, or smoking cessation platforms. Instead of forcing change, these apps use intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to motivate users to make healthier choices in order to achieve better health outcomes. For instance, to get users to exercise more, a gamified app can incorporate elements like daily challenges, badges, and progress levels. They may also set feedback loops that give users instant gratification. Gamified experiences for habit change may also allow users to set personalized goals and track their progress. This makes them feel like they’re in control of their decisions, which encourages responsibility and consistency.
Educational gamification for learning – Some healthcare gamification apps focus on helping users learn important information relating to their health. Education is generally more effective when delivered in the most interactive way possible. This can be achieved by incorporating gamification elements like quizzes, progress bars, and badges that pass information across in ways that make it more likely to stick.
Social gamification for community engagement – Some healthcare gamification apps focus on driving engagement using social features. In recent years, social media platforms have become quite popular. It is possible to tap into the increased need for social connection by using social elements such as competition and collaboration to boost user interactions. On platforms that use these features, users may get to share results with friends, compete with others, or simply draw inspiration from them to reach their own goals.
Narrative approaches using storytelling – Some healthcare gamification platforms structure the entire experience into interesting storylines or arcs that are sure to keep users actively engaged. People love a good story, and platforms that use this approach tend to create emotional stakes with users that encourage them to go through different milestones without even thinking about the hard work.
Reward-based systems with incentives – Healthcare gamification apps can be built around rewards or incentives. With progress tracking, tangible and intangible rewards, patients may be motivated to take a more active role in their medical journey. The promise of a reward can result in better adherence to treatment plans, healthier habits, and other positive health outcomes.
Simulation-based tools using VR/AR for therapy or training – Innovative simulation-based tools such as Virtual and Augmented Reality are revolutionizing healthcare gamification. These immersive technologies make digital experiences feel more real and engaging for users. This is particularly useful for some use cases that require tangible interactions, such as therapy or training.

Benefits of Gamification in Healthcare: Why Gamification Matters in Modern Healthcare?

Gamification in healthcare apps transforms health management into an engaging experience. It leverages all kinds of game mechanics or features to motivate and educate users. Some of the most notable benefits of gamification include:

Patient motivation – The promise of a reward, the satisfaction of completing a challenge, and the possibility of interacting with friends are all good reasons to want to take on a task. People typically need a push to work toward their health-related goals, and these features provide all the reasons they need.
Adherence – Following a treatment plan or adopting healthier habits can be tedious. Gamification strategies in apps like Mango Health motivate users to adhere to their health plans. That’s because gamification makes boring, chore-like tasks more interesting, making it more likely for users to follow through on them.
Education – Utilizing the concept of gamification, educational content becomes an entertaining tool for learning about health. This makes complex information more accessible and easier to digest for users.
Overall health outcomes – Gamification isn’t just about making digital experiences more enjoyable. The mobile app engagement strategies used by these platforms also make it more likely to improve health outcomes. With these features, patients are more likely to follow through on their treatment plans, leading to better outcomes at the end of the day.
Supported by evidence and behavioral science principles – Gamification isn’t just random trial and error. It is an evidence-based approach to healthcare that leverages real-world psychology and behavioral science principles.

Patient-Focused Use Cases

Gamification can be applied directly to patient care. This refers to apps, wearables, or platforms that users can access directly on their own to manage various aspects of their healthcare, such as medication adherence, disease management, rehabilitation, and so on. Here’s an overview of some of the core patient-focused use cases for this technology.

Medication Adherence and Treatment Compliance

Treatment outcomes often depend on how well patients follow their medication or treatment schedule. Healthcare apps that help with medication adherence make this possible by helping users stay on track. More than just setting alarms and reminders, self-management medication apps use gamification elements like progress tracking, rewards, and storytelling elements to help patients with self-management so they follow through on their medication and care plans.

Chronic Disease and Lifestyle Management

Chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases are serious and life-threatening. But many of these conditions can be effectively managed through lifestyle modifications. Gamification can help patients take a more active role in their chronic disease management by providing them with additional incentives.

Some healthcare apps offer users rewards such as points or badges when they maintain a progress streak and adhere to healthy routines recommended for their conditions. These apps may also make the treatment process more interesting and less isolating through social and community features that help users connect with others with similar conditions.

Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy

The physical therapy and rehabilitation space is one of the areas that has found the most use for gamification. Games can be used to make rehabilitation more interesting, especially for pediatric patients who get distracted easily.

Some gamification apps tap into advanced features such as motion-tracking, computer vision, and VR exercises to make the rehabilitation process more engaging for users. Social features such as friendly leaderboards and multiplayer challenges can also improve user engagement through the power of peer influence. Physical rehabilitation routines can be structured into levels or quests with adaptive difficulty as users make progress. This can go a long way in improving engagement and overall outcome.

Mental Health and Cognitive Training

Administering treatment for mental health patients can be tricky. With many mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety, patients often lose the motivation to follow through on their treatment, which makes recovery difficult. Gamification elements such as rewards and progress streaks can be incorporated into mental and emotional health apps to provide a gentle nudge for users who lack intrinsic motivation. Conventional game features like quests, levels, and power-ups can also help users build progress gradually and train their brains over time toward achieving stable emotional well-being.

Preventive Health and Healthy Habits

Aside from helping patients get the treatment they need, gamified experiences can also help with preventive care. It takes a lot of effort and consistency to build a healthy lifestyle. Things like exercising, limiting screen time, or eating healthy don’t come naturally to most people. However, gamification apps can provide both external and internal incentives to drive behavioral change.

For instance, there are apps that pay users based on the number of steps they walk per day, encouraging them to live a healthy lifestyle. Some apps also use community-based features such as virtual challenges and leaderboards to create healthy competition that drives users to commit to a healthy lifestyle.

Professional and Enterprise Use Cases

Regular users aren’t the only ones who can benefit from gamified digital experiences. Hospitals, companies, and professionals can use gamification to boost staff engagement and overall operational efficiency. The following are some notable enterprise use cases of this technology.

Medical Education and Simulation

Gaming elements can improve the way healthcare professionals acquire medical knowledge in both formal and informal training contexts. The principles of gamification make the learning process more fun and interactive, helping users retain more knowledge.

Instead of generic and boring training, gamified platforms can create simulations of various medical procedures with varying levels of complexity. Using these, medical professionals can practice their skills while having fun at the same time. Even simple quizzes, leaderboards, goal or point-based learning, and so on can improve the speed and efficiency of the training process for medical students, clinicians, and other professionals.

Staff Engagement and Workflow Optimization

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities need diligent staff and efficient workflows to serve patients at optimal capacity. Gamification features can be introduced into the digital and physical aspects of these healthcare operations to boost staff engagement and overall productivity.

For instance, leaderboards, badges, and point-based reward systems can motivate healthcare professionals to perform at their optimal level. These gaming-related initiatives promote a sense of healthy competition among professionals and provide additional incentives to deliver the best service possible to patients.

Pharmaceutical and Medtech Training

Enterprise healthcare goes beyond providing care to patients. Pharmaceuticals and medtech professionals also provide indirect services to patients. Companies in this niche can borrow gamification features to train their sales teams, researchers, clinicians, and other professionals. This can help boost knowledge and adoption of the various products they use in delivering their services.

How to Implement Gamification in Healthcare

Implementing gamification in healthcare is tricky business. You need to figure out how to incorporate fun features that pull users in without causing toxic addiction. These features also have to be challenging, but not too difficult. Most importantly, you want them to be effective at helping users achieve lasting results. Below is a practical guide highlighting the steps to follow in designing and launching a gamification strategy in a healthcare setting.

Step 1: Discovery and Needs Assessment

The first step in implementing gamification is to define the “why” of your project. This involves identifying the target user behavior you’re hoping to change, as well as the metrics for measuring this change. While gamification is a good strategy, it shouldn’t be done just for the sake of it. For effectiveness, you need to define what goals you intend to achieve. You can determine this through stakeholder interviews, market research, and a thorough analysis of target users and their needs.

Step 2: Design and Game Mechanics Selection

After defining the goals of your project, proceed with implementation by choosing the game mechanics that will help achieve these goals. You can’t just include random gaming elements in your app; you have to choose features that are more likely to be effective at motivating your target audience.

For instance, if your target audience is more influenced by group activities, prioritize gaming elements that focus on collaboration and competition. Similarly, if your users love autonomy and self-determination, features like streaks and progress bars will be more appealing. After settling on a design, you can proceed with implementation.

Step 3: Pilot and Test

To gauge the reception of your gamified experiences, it is important to thoroughly test them with your target audience. Run small-scale pilots or A/B tests before full implementation. This allows you to fine-tune your product and find the most productive features. You also get to measure early results and adjust accordingly before a full rollout.

Step 4: Scale and Integrate

In many healthcare use cases, your gamified digital platform is probably not a standalone solution. You might need to integrate it with other existing systems like your EHR, telehealth platforms, wearable devices, etc. Effective integration is an important step in extending the functionality of your solution to its optimal capacity. You also need to figure out how to grow or scale effectively.

Step 5: Sustain and Optimize

A vital step in running a gamified healthcare application or platform long-term is to measure or track key performance indicators. The valuable insights derived from this allow you to monitor patient progress while making necessary modifications to make your solution more appealing to users. Gamified platforms also collect more patient data, which can be analyzed and combined with personalized feedback to optimize user experience.

Risks and Challenges in Gamifying Healthcare

Health gamification can significantly improve clinical outcomes while driving other positive results for individuals and enterprises. However, applying the principles of gamification to healthcare carries a few risks and challenges. Some potential downsides of gamification in healthcare include:

Privacy Issues

Gamification platforms typically require large amounts of data to deliver personalized experiences to users. This often includes sensitive health and behavioral data, which can lead to privacy issues if exposed. To prevent this, gamified apps are expected to adopt solid data protection mechanisms. They must also be transparent about the type of data they collect and how they use it. This helps them stay compliant with data protection standards such as GDPR and HIPAA.

Dark Patterns

By design, gamification uses psychological tricks and emotional tactics to drive desired user behavior. While this is great in the right hands, it can also be manipulated for profit. These strategies interfere with an individual’s personal decision-making process. Healthcare organizations implementing gamification must follow strict player protection standards to ensure they’re not manipulating users for profit or taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.

Over-Reliance on Extrinsic Rewards

Extrinsic rewards such as points, competitive leaderboards, badges, and so on are quite effective at driving positive changes in health management. However, when done in excess, these gaming elements can also cause problems by triggering anxiety or fueling an obsession with tangible rewards. This is particularly sensitive in healthcare contexts where you’re dealing with users who may have psychological issues.

The best approach is to combine intrinsic motivations with external stimuli. It is also important to monitor users’ psychological responses to gamified experiences and adjust them accordingly.

Real-World Examples of Gamification in Healthcare

Many healthcare apps, wearable devices, and platforms are actively adopting gamification features to drive engagement and improve patient outcomes. The following are some real-world use cases and gamification examples in healthcare.

PelviFly

Using a device and a mobile application, PelviFly allows safe and effective pelvic floor muscle training. Women of all ages can train pelvic floor muscles through PelviFly, which integrates a gaming experience with medical treatment.

We at CrustLab were part of the process of reengineering this mobile app. You can read more on this in this healthcare cross-platform mobile app case study.

PelviFly operates in the healthcare market in the Middle and Western Europe. It has a small team of coaches and specially trained medical and physiotherapists working behind the scenes. Their efforts have resulted in more than 20,000 women regularly training their pelvic floor muscles with PelviFly’s product.

FitBit

Fitness tracking app FitBit is a popular app that supports healthy lifestyles worldwide. Using FitBit, users can create challenges on the FitBit community interface and compete with other users to see who gets better results at the gym and who does more steps.

You can track any running, cycling, or other workouts with SmartTrack on Fitbit’s multi-sport mode. Each type of exercise is recorded using a different algorithm, providing the most accurate evaluation of your performance. In addition to the number of steps, it can also measure other activity parameters with great precision, and with the integrated GPS, it collects even more data.

All of this is connected to a mobile app, of course. To ensure the best results, Fitbit’s mobile app connects to the Fitbit wristwatch. As you’ll see in the next examples, a marriage between wearable technology and mobile apps is not new or revolutionary, though!

Bayer’s Didget

Bayer’s Didget was an early and notable example of gamification in healthcare, though it is no longer on the market. Launched around 2010, it was a blood glucose meter for children aged 4 to 14 that connected to Nintendo DS gaming systems. It helped with diabetes management by rewarding children with points for consistent blood glucose testing. These points could then be used to unlock new levels and items within compatible video games.

While innovative for its time, the product has been discontinued. Its history serves as an important case study on the challenges of integrating healthcare devices with rapidly evolving consumer electronics.

Huawei Body Fat Scale

Huawei offers a range of smart scales, such as the Scale 3, which are intelligent bathroom scales that can measure multiple body composition indicators at once (e.g., weight, BMI, body fat rate, muscle mass).

The scale connects via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to the Huawei Health app on a smartphone. App users can view their comprehensive body composition report, track trends over time, and receive personalized health advice, effectively gamifying the process of monitoring one’s physical health progress

MySugr

MySugr, a startup based in Austria, offers fun digital solutions for diabetics. The app is suitable for both children (mySugr Junior) and adults. More than a million users have already signed up for MySugr, which is available in 52 countries and 13 different languages.

MySugr lets patients track the blood sugar, carbs, bolus, and estimated HbA1c of their own body with one glance. The users of this app have been able to better control their condition since they log their data each day. The health data is also available to physicians so they can provide better and more customized treatment. Using this app, users can also receive real-time feedback for dealing with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.

How to Develop and Connect an IoT Device to a Mobile App? – Examples in Healthcare

Many gamified healthcare apps don’t operate as standalone solutions. It is possible to connect these apps to real-world devices over an Internet of Things (IoT) network. This is a complex process consisting of hardware, software, and cloud components. The goal is to create a system where physical devices can collect data from patients in real time and transmit it to a mobile device connected over the same network.

A wearable watch is an excellent example of a physical IoT device that has found numerous applications in healthcare and gamification contexts. It is a piece of hardware with in-built advanced sensors that continuously collect health data from the wearer and transmit it to a mobile app on the user’s device.

The connectivity layer is typically via Bluetooth, but some devices also use wireless networks and NFC for connectivity. The health app on the user’s smartphone is where all the data collected is put to good use. Here, the data is presented using user-friendly charts and graphs or incorporated into gamified experiences.

Healthcare Gamification Market Overview and Trends

Market research reports show significant growth in the healthcare gamification market, though exact figures vary by source. For example, a May 2024 report from MarketsandMarkets valued the market at USD 4.1 billion in 2024 and projected it to reach USD 14.3 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 28.2%.

Another analysis from Precedence Research estimated the market at USD 4.95 billion in 2023, projecting it to grow to USD 33.27 billion by 2032. While figures differ, all major reports indicate a strong upward trend.

The growth of the healthcare gamification market has been linked to several factors, including the increasing incidence rate of lifestyle-related and chronic diseases. These factors are driving demand for better healthcare management practices, which include adopting healthcare gamification.

Emerging technologies like AI and VR also present future growth opportunities for the healthcare sector. Developers are now exploring strategies for integrating deep learning models into gamified health apps. One way this can be useful is the creation of AI chatbots that promote narratives and storytelling elements in gamified apps. AI gamification can also aid personalization and customization.

Healthcare apps can also leverage Web3 gamification and other blockchain-powered technologies. This trend can help create robust in-app economies where points and other digital rewards have real-world value. Blockchain-powered solutions also tend to be more secure and offer users true control compared to conventional alternatives.

Conclusion: The Future of Gamified Healthcare Apps

To deliver ease and convenience, healthcare providers are working tirelessly to transform their mobile app experiences by incorporating gamification services. Thus, gamification in healthcare will continue to be an exciting development field with several ongoing innovations.

Despite their imperfections, healthcare gamification examples provide users with more immersive experiences and can drive better outcomes in preventive, simple, and even chronic medical scenarios. Of course, all of these benefits can only be achieved when gamification is applied ethically and strategically.

CrustLab can help you design and incorporate gamified experiences into your new or existing mobile application. Contact us today to get started.

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