Healthcare Strategy Review

The Gamification of Healthcare: Is it the Way to Go?

Game-design elements have provided a sense of motivation and encouragement to many sectors of the healthcare industry, from individual user benefit to mass-campaigning from public health organizations. The gamification of healthcare has been transformative for patient motivation, especially when considering the doctor-patient-administrator relationship. Public health campaigns utilize gamification as a powerful strategy to promote healthy habits, such as mobile programming to encourage vaccinations, as well as online games to maintain hand hygiene. Through investigating both intrinsic and extrinsic behavior, this paper explores how gamification strategies are used throughout healthcare when considering the individual, as well as a population. This paper concludes with an emphasis on the importance of ensuring protective measures are talent to maintain data privacy, as well as inclusivity within socioeconomic statuses are integral to the success of gamification strategies, in order to combat concerns about the ethical concerns that may arise. Introduction