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Gamification in healthcare: examples that work

Gamification in healthcare gets talked about as if it were a style. It is not. It is a decision about what the audience is going to do: watch something, or handle something and find out what happens.

This guide goes through what the term covers, five pieces we have actually built, what each of them was for, and the cases where a game is the wrong tool and a two-minute video wins.

A serious game for a product launch

For Abbott Nutrition International we built a virtual reality serious game to launch Glucerna at the SEMDOR 2023 congress in Seville. Healthcare professionals put on a headset and went through a simulated clinical setting where the supplement supports the nutritional health of people with diabetes.

The point was not the headset. A launch at a congress competes with twenty other stands for the same minutes; a game buys those minutes and, more importantly, changes what the conversation starts from. The visitor arrives at the rep having already done the thing the rep was going to explain.

Anatomy that can be handled

The interactive 3D canine anatomy application we built for Boehringer Ingelheim is used in the consulting room: the vet rotates, separates and isolates structures while talking to the owner. There is no score here either, only interaction — and that is enough to change the conversation from a description into a demonstration.

It is the clearest example of why the mechanic matters more than the label. Nobody would call it a game, and it does exactly what a game does: it makes the other person participate.

When gamification is the wrong answer

When the message is linear. A mechanism of action with one correct order does not get better by letting people shuffle it; it gets slower. That content belongs in a 3D medical animation.

When nobody owns the content after launch. A game has rules, and rules go out of date faster than a video does. If there is no plan and no budget to update it, it will be wrong within two years and still online.

And when the real goal is reach. A game is deep and narrow; a video is shallow and wide. Choosing the wrong shape is the most expensive mistake in this category.

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• Corsa
• Bionet

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