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Gamification in Healthcare is an ongoing trend! Many of you might be of the opinion that it’s simply a marketing strategy of app creators to attract audiences or an attempt to appease the fun-loving new-era patients. But, in reality, gamification has much more to deliver than just amusement and has something in store for individuals of all age groups.

Well, gamification won’t cure patients completely but can motivate them to adhere to healthy lifestyle practices, and overcome challenging health tasks; resulting in improved patient outcomes. And, you’ll be surprised to learn about the potential & amazing benefits of Gamification to health app users; including patients, providers as well as practitioners.

As per market research conducted by the popular online portal Global Market Insights, the total market value of the Healthcare Gamification market was USD 25.3 Billion in the year 2020. They predicted this value to grow at a CAGR of over 14.6% from the period of 2021 to 2027. And today, the concept of gamification is gaining momentum in the healthcare application development industry at a fast pace.

This post throws light on the implementations of healthcare gamification, use cases, and its enormous power to improve patient outcomes.

What is meant by Gamification in Healthcare?

Gamification in healthcare refers to the strategy of integrating gaming elements, gaming principles, game mechanics, and game design methods into non-gaming apps like healthcare apps. The key objectives of gamification are to induce fun and engaging elements into tiresome activities, motivate users to follow wellness regimes, and improve patients’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral health. For instance, chalking out a diet or healthcare regime, Gamified exercises for patients with mobility impairments, back pain, etc are some of the gamification concepts in healthcare apps.

Gamification in healthcare works best for medical apps that deal with fitness, wellness, nutrition, self-management, medication management, mental health, physical therapy, rehabilitation, etc.

How are Gamification Elements integrated into Healthcare Apps?

Simulation Gaming

Immersive simulation gaming aims at making the patients visualize the adverse effects and consequences of health-related issues, if not properly dealt with. Such kind of gaming elements is also useful for healthcare researchers and clinicians, helping them to upgrade their technical knowledge, medical processes, and patient monitoring practices.

Storytelling Approach

Storytelling has always been an effective strategy for convincing people and so, today’s health apps are introducing storytelling elements into healthcare gaming. These stories involve players achieving challenging health/fitness objectives through fun activities. Missions are designed for the users and they can listen to audio narratives uncovering an adventurous story. This inspires them to complete difficult wellness missions overcoming all adversities. This approach is usually employed in Fitness apps for missions concerning jogging, running, exercising, etc.

Levels and Challenges

Gamification in healthcare often involves competitive components like gaming levels for fulfilling wellness/fitness milestones. Here, the basic level consists of simple tasks to perform. As the game proceeds, the levels become more complex due to the addition of difficult tasks. The users have to nail the achievements like covering 5 kms in 2 days, etc. mentioned in a specific level, to qualify for the consecutive level.

The addition of challenges increases the competitiveness of the entire activity and motivates the users to achieve the impossible. Here, users can achieve a specific fitness goal and challenge other users or can accept challenges from others to perform a specific task.

Progress Bars

The app tracks users’ wellness/health activities continuously. The progress made by users is measured and the performance statistics get displayed, usually in graphical formats. This way, users stay informed on their daily progress. For example, heart rate monitoring apps display the treatment progress via graphs while fitness apps track training & exercise parameters as calories burnt, steps walked, miles covered, etc.

Leaderboards & Ratings

Individuals are often tempted to compare themselves with others. Leaderboards and performance ratings make use of this tendency to motivate users. Leaderboards are used in group training sessions to assess and identify the most successful member in the group. Also, users are rated on the basis of their performance. Ratings are displayed in a tabular format so that users are able to compare their performance with other members. This creates a competitive environment that pushes the users to improve their performance and achieve healthcare objectives no matter how difficult they are. And, being able to share their achievements on social media enhances the overall effectiveness of this entire strategy.

Virtual Representatives/Avatar

Some health apps, particularly fitness apps, have implemented this novel and interesting feature. Here, an avatar, a virtual representation of the user, is involved. When a user loses weight the same result is reflected in the avatar whereas if the user gains weight, the avatar gets punished.

Rewards & Badges

Health app users get badges or reward points for completing a mandated activity. The badges and reward points are visual identifiers of a patient’s success in fulfilling necessary health-related tasks. In some apps, users can even exchange reward points for receiving in-app service benefits, discount coupons, buying medicines, or earning a free monthly subscription.

This approach encourages users to set milestones for accomplishing personalized healthcare goals that had seemed boring, tiresome and challenging in the past. And, winning rewards or recognition for achievements instills a sense of pride amongst the users and motivates them to keep up their good work. Sharing their progress and achievements with other users or friends builds up competitiveness, pushing users to stick to the desired health or wellness regimes. What’s more? These additional perks boost users’ loyalty to a specific medical application.

Gamification in Healthcare: Use Cases

Children’s Health Apps

The doctors and patients of kids undergoing long-term treatment find it difficult to make them understand the significance of their ailments as well as the importance of adhering to medications & therapies. Moreover, young kids often refuse to swallow bitter pills and undergo therapies. Gaming elements play a crucial role here by teaching the kids to be more responsible concerning their health. Gaming also adds fun elements to make them forget the fact that they are undergoing treatment and increase their willingness to follow regimes.

The pharma company Pfizer created a video game that teaches children suffering from haemophilia the necessity of following treatment plans and medication. Hemocratf provides a simulated environment where kids learn how treatment methodologies work and how they can help themselves during accidents before help arrives. The app My PlayHome Hospital prepares kids for doctor visits and helps them to shed their phobia by turning the kids into virtual doctors. With MyTeeth, kids learn the correct way of brushing their teeth.

Mental Health Apps

Emotional health issues are rising and modern-day individuals need some help in managing such woes. What can be a better solution than gamified apps?

Moodfit uplifts the users’ mood when they are facing issues like stress, anxiety, and depression. Users can track their daily progress and mood swings, and also receive actionable exercise recommendations.

Loona alerts users about their mood and helps them to get some relaxing sleep after a hectic day. Tactful gaming elements like storytelling, relaxation activities, and pleasing sounds are used for inducing sleep.

Health Apps for managing Medication & Chronic Conditions

Several chronic diseases like diabetes require self-management, which is one of the most difficult regimes to stick to. Well, Gamification in healthcare has eased things.

Mango Health enables patients to adhere to medication regimes, offers information on medicines, and warns about the possible side effects of medications. Flaredown monitors patients’ health by updating patients on medical conditions, symptoms, treatments, and the way these factors can affect a patient’s physical/mental state. With the app Manage My Pain, users can identify the areas affected by pain, track the intensity of the pain, and receive suggestions on relieving the pain.

Physical Therapy/Rehabilitation Apps

Patients find it challenging as well as time-consuming to recover from issues like mobility, independence for carrying out daily activities, etc. after an accident or severe injury. Gamification increases the effectiveness of physical therapy.

The app Prehab educates users on ways of controlling their health via physical therapy. Users get a host of tips, workouts, and the facility to connect with trained therapists whenever needed. The solution named Eyesight Exercise offers audio tips and instructions for eyesight improvement and eye relaxation techniques. The rehabilitation app Physera offers exercise tips to build up flexibility and strength. VERA utilizes motion tracking technology, compares patients’ performances with desired standards, and provides corrective measures.

Nutrition & Fitness Apps

Nutrition and fitness apps are quite popular amongst new-age individuals for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Introducing gaming elements into such apps is an added perk for users.

Apple’s Health app allows users to track wellness parameters like heart rate, hydration, activity, sleep quality/patterns, calories gained/burnt, and many more. The fasting app Zero tracks down the mood changes of users during fasting periods. MyFitnessPal is a nutrition app that helps users to track their daily calorie intake, manage weight, set goals, and select food recommendations from a nutrition database as per their healthcare objectives.

Cancer Treatment

Gamification in Healthcare has proven beneficial for cancer treatment as well. The gaming app Re-Mission employs the nanobot named “Roxy.” Roxy is a player that fights and combats crude cancer treatment methodologies depicted in the form of weapons like radiation guns, chemoblaster, antibiotic rockets, etc. Roxy survives all adversities and this example has helped cancer patients to stick to medication and therapies.

Gamification in Healthcare: Advantages

Improves the Effectiveness of Treatment Plans & Medication Adherence

Gamification in healthcare helps patients with one of the most neglected tasks; that’s adherence to medication and treatment plans. Gamification imbibes resilience and motivates users to take medications on time. It even offers incentives to follow healthcare regimes, track medication schedules, refill prescriptions on time, stick to doctor appointments, etc. Gamification also enables doctors to monitor patients’ health activities and verify whether their patients are following medication/treatment regimes as required.

Optimizes Patient Engagement & Retention

Gamification motivates individuals to achieve their healthcare goals and makes them realize their accountability for their healthcare choices. Attractive and engaging games make monotonous health tasks all the more enjoyable. In the long run, gamification in healthcare educates patients about their illnesses, enables patients to battle depression effortlessly, and encourages them to stick to treatment plans. This way, health app owners can engage and retain customers in the best possible manner.

Valuable Consumer Insights and Feedback

The healthcare data entered by the users into the app and the patient improvement data generated within the app help providers to gain valuable insights and consumer feedback. This information is utilized for identifying current trends, customer needs, and areas of improvement. It enables healthcare providers to design user-centric apps with better clinical outcomes; provide more customized features, and implement improved security protocols.

An Effective Medical Learning Tool

Medical Students, as well as practitioners, need to learn and remember humongous facts, concepts, theories, emerging technologies, etc. and gamification makes this process way easier. Gamified medical apps help healthcare professional retain knowledge and information as they can cover complex topics speedily and with several repetitions.

Final Thoughts

Gamification in Healthcare benefits both patients as well as providers. Users get an elevated experience, receive assistance with health/medication regimes, get the much-needed motivation to accomplish fitness goals, health objectives, etc. Providers can engage patients in a better way, and win customer loyalty, and brand recognition. However, to extract the full potential of gamification, healthcare app developers need to craft solutions based on well-established theories and game mechanics.

So, how about designing a gamified medical app or gamifying your existing healthcare app to make it more effective, appealing, and engaging to users? For achieving this objective, I would recommend you to partner with an experienced healthcare app development company that will help you leverage gamification elements to the fullest.

Healthcare application development services

Modern-day patients get so carried away by the benefits and convenience of smartphone health apps that they don’t think twice before trusting a provider with their sensitive and personally identifiable information. Providers too, do not bother to adopt all the stringent security measures that will protect patient data from unauthorized access, unless they are compelled to do so by regulatory authorities.

Healthcare mobile applications are double-edged swords. On one hand, mHealth apps have provided unthinkable outcomes for patients, doctors, and service providers. But, on the other hand, the usage of smartphone apps in healthcare has made patient data all the more vulnerable to security threats. Healthcare data is the most valuable data on the dark web these days. There have been incidents of health data breaches in recent years that have compromised the records of millions of patients.

This post discusses the reasons why there is an urgent need for regulatory governance and legal frameworks for healthcare app development.

The Current State of Healthcare App Security

Medical apps are supposed to follow certain practices, strategies, and regulatory compliances mandated by Government authorities; to minimize the chances of security breaches. But, do all health apps follow standard security practices? Let’s explore!

A distinguished cybersecurity researcher Alissa Knight conducted a thorough analysis of 30 popular smartphone healthcare apps, and the reports are alarming. All of these apps had security vulnerabilities. And, the loopholes identified in 30 apps together can expose the sensitive information of around 23 million users.

Here are some shocking stats of the research study:

- The API keys of 77% of the medical mobile apps were hardcoded and some of these didn’t expire.
- 7% of the apps had hardcoded usernames and passwords in the form of plain text.
- 50% of the API vulnerabilities detected within healthcare would enable hackers to access private and sensitive patient information like personally identifiable data, EHRs (Electronic Health Records) health information, and medical billing details.
- 100% of the 30 healthcare apps tested were exposed to BOLA (Broken Object Level Authorization) attacks. Such an attack is executed by counterfeiting the user IDs.
- 100% of the apps didn’t implement the “certificate pinning” protocol that compels a health app to verify the certificate of the server against an authentic and known copy. This made the apps highly vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

Potential Risks of Hardcoding APIs

APIs establish communication between mobile apps and a hospital’s infrastructure, a Cloud service, or a physical server and facilitate data exchange. API keys are used for authenticating the application to other services like payment processing. API keys contain important and confidential information that needs to be secured. And, hardcoding of API keys and other crucial user credentials in mobile/web apps exposes health data to security breaches. According to research conducted by Gartner, by the year 2022 API vulnerabilities will be the major cause of data breaches for enterprise apps.

It’s a common practice of healthcare app developers to hardcode confidential app data directly into the app’s source code and employ obfuscation methodologies for securing the app. However, such security practices are not sufficient to protect health data. Professional hackers can effortlessly break into this data by carrying out the process of reverse-engineering the application. Once the hacker can access API keys, they can use this data to create new software that exactly resembles the actual application; this enables hackers to make arbitrary API calls. Also, the attackers can get access to the app’s back-end infrastructure for interacting with the servers and thereby collect sensitive patient information.

Consequences of Healthcare Data Breaches

Healthcare data breaches can lead to hefty fines for the app provider owing to HIPAA/GDPR violations as well as reputational damage for medical organizations.

Patients whose data gets compromised lose their privacy/secrecy and may face discrimination at their workplaces and social circles owing to certain health conditions. Certain businesses might misuse patient data and misdirect them into making unreasonable purchases. Leaked payment information and credentials can result in direct financial losses and exposed personal information may be misused by hackers to cause harm.

What’s the Solution for Healthcare App Security Woes?

There are regulatory compliances mandated for health apps like HIPAA, GDPR, FDA, etc. Nevertheless, these mandates fail to cover all areas of health app vulnerability, specifically smartphone health apps. There is an ambiguity concerning the regulatory compliance of mobile health applications put forth by the aforesaid entities. Hence, there is an urgent need for additional rules and regulations and more importantly clarity on mobile health app regulatory protocols. Regulatory bodies of the government and healthcare industry should devise additional guidelines for healthcare app developers and medical app distributers that are not included in regulatory compliances. Such guidance will help maintain parameters like the quality, transparency, accountability, genuineness, and reliability of a healthcare application.

Security Protocols to be followed during Healthcare App Development

Healthcare app developers must ensure that data is encrypted during storage as well as transit. This ensures that the health app follows the desired authentication requirements and prevents the device’s chances of being jailbroken. The app must be designed in a way that the server has the information on whether an app running on a user’s smartphone device has been tampered with or not. Besides implementing security measures during healthcare app development, an app must also be monitored continuously after deployment.

Take a look at how the data encryption process works!

Here’s how data is encrypted while being transferred to cloud storage systems!

Source

Practices to Combat Healthcare App Security Threats

App Developers must furnish information on the app’s major stakeholders, monetization strategy, scientific sources, privacy policies/practices, consent methods, and so on to government authorities. This will enable the consumers to use healthcare apps securely and protect their privacy while app usage.

As per app store policies and the healthcare industry protocols concerning electronic transactions within an app, the consumers owe a refund from the app owners if the app fails to function as promised. But, not all apps adhere to this business protocol. Moreover, the app subscriptions can be unending unless consciously stopped by consumers. Furthermore, there isn’t any government regulation stating the reduction/regulation of in-app promotions and purchases in medical apps, other than the apps meant for kids.

For this reason, developers must strictly follow the legal protocols regarding consumer advertising and be transparent about the financial expenses that are involved in app downloads and usage. Also, app distributors must mandate time limits on the payment of subscriptions specifically if an app remains unused for a long duration, and activate refund practices in case of any unintended payments have been made by patients. Also, repeated requests for in-app purchases must be avoided particularly in apps that target vulnerable audience groups, like mental health apps.

Legal Framework for Multi-dimensional Assessment of Mobile Health Apps

Several health apps have been successful in escaping the attention of regulatory authorities as they are not even considered to fall under the category of healthcare devices. Moreover, even where regulatory frameworks exist, not all healthcare entities follow such regulations and there isn’t any protocol to make sure that all covered entities are complying with established standards. Furthermore, there’s hardly any regulatory guidance for apps implementing complex technologies like AI, ML, etc. as there’s no assessment model that will weigh the risk factors and implementation requirements of diverse digital technologies.

Therefore, international agencies and industry veterans urge the need for a legal framework that mandates a set of regulatory guidelines for classifying smartphone healthcare apps and defining the pre-market route of these apps. There has to be a common legal framework that assesses a health mobile app across multiple dimensions. This framework should be systematic and comprehensive enough to serve a wide range of functions including regulating market authorization/purchasing procedures, the secure usage of mHealth apps, etc.

Final Verdict:

The security vulnerabilities existing in modern-day medical apps and solutions and the severe repercussions of a data breach come with a heavy price for patients as well as providers. Hence, there is a dire need for legal frameworks and regulatory governance to protect healthcare data from security threats. Also, the government authorities must ensure that all healthcare apps are implementing the established standards.

If you are a healthcare provider and planning to create a highly functional future-friendly app that adheres to regulatory compliances it’s advisable to look for outsourced assistance. Partner with professional and experienced healthcare app development services in USA . that will provide end-to-end encryption for the sensitive data flowing in the application.

Industries, Page 8 Category

Gamification in Healthcare Apps: Use Cases & Amazing Benefits