Can You Gamify Health?

  • Prof. Maged N. Kamel Boulos

Press/Media: Research

Description

Professor Maged Kamel Boulos, Chair of Digital Health at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, is an expert on the development and evaluation of serious games for health. “It’s quite exciting to be involved in gamification at this time. We are beginning to amass a diversified set of examples of effective games. Monster Manor is one recent example. This game for children with type 1 diabetes involves them winning virtual coins (to be used for in-game progress) whenever they measure their blood glucose. Children performed more measurements with the game than without and continued to play the game over time. And at the other end of the age spectrum, there are interesting studies showing how for people with dementia a ‘cybercycling’ exergame (exercise game) results in better cognitive function than traditional exercise alone.”

 

 

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Meeting Professor Maged K. Boulos in Paris to talk about health gamification

 

 

As a digital health expert, I have observed that unfortunately not many apps designed by people in the health sector have scaled up. Yet after the recent success of Pokémon GO in getting people out of the home and walking for lengthy periods, we have proof that an engaging gamified mobile app could change exercise behaviour on a massive scale.

Period20 Sept 2016

Media coverage

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Media coverage

Keywords

  • Gamification