‍Games For Health have created a fundamental shift in the healthcare industry.‍

The healthcare industry is the largest and fastest-growing industry in the world, with 1.8 million people employed in this industry in 2021 in Australia alone.

It’s a vast network of medical professionals and patients that rely upon the best tools possible to help improve and save lives. For years healthcare physicians, researchers and clinicians are constantly searching for new ways to innovate in the field of digital healthcare and medicine.

How can we continue to improve human health and provide access to affordable, high-quality healthcare through the power of technology?

In the last decade, there has been a fundamental shift in the field of digital medicine and we’re discovering unique ways to help humankind through games and gamification.

Video games are now modernising healthcare - they are progressive tools that are transforming the way professionals deliver patient care.

In this blog, I highlight the best healthcare games from 2012 to 2022. Let’s explore the spectacular impact games for health can have on our lives.

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What are Healthcare Games?
Why do Healthcare Games Work?
What are the Different Types of Healthcare Games?
List of 14 Games for Health from 2012 - 2022
Healthcare Game Trends to Look Out For in 2023 and Beyond

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What are Healthcare Games or Games For Health?

Healthcare games are digital tools designed for a clinical purpose specifically to support medical professionals and aid patients.

The design, mechanics and objectives of healthcare games revolve around improving overall players’ health and wellbeing. They have a range of applications, from education, training, research, rehabilitation and diagnosis. At their core, healthcare games aim to optimise care and health outcomes through gameplay.

Games for health can be developed to assist medical professionals with their work or as a stand-alone experience for the patient.

Games for health fall under the broader genre of games called serious games.

Serious games or transformational games go beyond pure entertainment, their purpose may be to change behaviour, create strong emotional memories or give first-hand experiences of complex concepts through the power of play.

Like environmental games, healthcare games are just one of the many applications of serious games.

Looking to learn more about the potential of serious games?

Check out my guide on ‘What are Serious Games: Everything you need to know in 2020’. Read it here!‍

*Click here to read our Serious Games Guide 2020: Everything you need to know about serious games for 2020*

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3 Reasons Why Healthcare Games Work

The medicine industry has been using games for health for years to train professionals and teach students. In the last decade with the rise of mobile technology, extended reality healthcare games have now been injected into our day-to-day life.

Due to the ever-growing importance of play in our lives, healthcare games can be found on almost every platform available today. Whether it is through all-important research and development of new technology to help patients recovering from major cognitive failures to simple pill reminder apps.

In my previous blogs, I’ve talked about how games are now part of our daily lives, play helps us get through our day have evolved into more than just distractions. Games for health have also become an intrinsic part of our lifestyles, so many people now rely on games to help maintain our physical and mental well-being.

There is a myriad of studies on the use of video games in healthcare. Based on the video games researched, these studies concluded that selected healthcare games improved the following:

69% of psychological therapy outcomes
59% of physical therapy outcomes
50% of physical activity outcomes
42% of health education outcomes
42% of pain distraction outcomes

The function of applying repetitive tasks in a gamified form has been proven to work a lot better for both patients and non-patients when it comes to maintaining their health. Many games have also been adapted into the e-health industry through simulation training for surgeons and patient care for nurses.

Each type of healthcare game has its benefits, here are 3 main reasons medical video games are so effective:

1. Simulation allows Experimentation

Games recreate real-life scenarios to allow for experimentation. In a research capacity, developers have control over the virtual environment and control variables. Players can fail and learn with experience and through the consequences of their decisions,
Learner-centred method of training - players taking an active role in their learning, digital healthcare training relies on the player learning by doing. Players experience this first-hand for training, analysis, and prediction.

2. Achieve Real Outcomes

When training, medical students and professionals can practise a range of skills without fear of harming themselves or a patient. The skills learned can be transferred into real-world applications.
Monitoring changes in a patient’s health is vital for improving their well-being. Games are measurable, meaning medical professionals can use data-driven outcomes to make better-informed clinical decisions.

3. Modernising Medicine

Games is just one step into providing more widely accessible and affordable care. Advancements in technology have paved the way for innovative healthcare hardware and software.
80% of Australians are ready to share their health data in a digitally enabled health system. This means digital tools like video games can provide personalised treatment to a wide range of patients to better address every diagnosis on individual needs.

The applications for games in the health industry are limitless and the technology being innovated to allow for this to be applied to education, training and general health is growing by the day.

To captivate a wider player base, entertainment games can be re-purposed with a health-related objective. Pokémon Go is an outstanding example of a commercial entertainment game evolving into a fitness-fuelled frenzy of fun. In 2015, developers Niantic gamified real-world exercise through the joy of catching iconic and beloved Pokémon.

As of December 2016, Niantic says that they’ve travelled 8.7 billion kilometres just by walking outside in the search for new Pokémon to catch. The developer put this another way, to convey just how far that is: That distance is comparable to more than 200,000 trips around the Earth.

This is just one example of video games have encouraged players to improve their health in a unique way.

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5 Types of Health Games

There are various types of health games depending on the reason and setting in which they are used. Some health games are made as an entertaining form of exercise, while others are used in more serious situations to simulate otherwise dangerous environments to practice in. The main sub-categories for health games can be otherwise broadly categorized within the following:

Health and Wellness: These types of games can be used by both patients and non-patients to improve lifestyle choices such as exercise, sleep, and limiting the use of harmful substances such as alcohol or smoking.
Training and Simulation: This would mostly only be seen in hospital and clinical settings to perform training initiatives and programmes for healthcare professionals.
Diagnosis: Very specific function games or tools that are gamified to allow for the detection of certain neurological problems, such as ADHD.
Treatment and Rehabilitation: Specific and sometimes tailor-made games prescribed to people post-surgery or diagnosis makes the process of getting better and more engaging.
Education: While most if not all of the above categories also serve as a form of education, there are some health games specifically designed to provide nothing more than an engaging and immersive pathway for learning.

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Here are 15 Games For Health Changing Lives for the Better from 2012 to 2022:

Ring Fit Adventure by Nintendo (2019)

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Themes: Health and Wellness

Since the Wii, Nintendo have been pioneers in combining fun with a purpose - encouraging players to get up on their feet and get active in the comfort of their own home. Ring Fit Adventure is an exercising role-playing adventure game where the player uses the “Ring Con” and “Leg Strap” to control in-game movement. Players squat, press and flex their way through challenges designed for a wide range of body types and levels of fitness.

Players traverse through an adventure and enemy-filled world, jogging in place, doing sit-ups for attack and relaxing yoga poses to regain health. The intensity of the adventure can be adjusted and for the extra motivated fitness fiends out there, you can take the Ring Con with Joy-Con attachments without the Switch to the outside world, do the same exercises and it will all sync up to your game on your arrival back home.

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Reflexion Health by Relfexion (2014)

Platform: Kinect for Windows

Themes: Treatment and Rehabilitation

Reflexion is an FDA-approved platform that allows patients undergoing at-home physical therapy to get the proper help they need to recover. All of the motion-captured exercises are monitored by real-life physical therapists in order to ensure the proper treatment and changes to routine are managed.

Reflexion uses the Virtual Exercise Rehabilitation Assistant, or VERA, to facilitate lower recovery times and lower costs for patients. Considering the global shift in lifestyle preferences, remote physical therapy can be beneficial in so many more ways.

The technology does not completely negate the need for physical therapists, as it is only a facilitator for the patients. Reflexion encourages physical therapists and patients to work together on progressing their healing. Gamified healthcare hopefully means more easy access to physical therapy as well as, more patients responding positively to the therapy.

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CogCubed & Groundskeeper by MIT Media Lab (2013)

Platform: Sifteo Cubes, a set of small high-tech cubes resembling tiny TV sets

Themes: Diagnosis

Following a TED talk on the application of the MIT game cubes for general entertainment, child psychiatrist Monika Heller saw the potential for health gamification to create a new kind of attention deficit hyperactive disorder detection tool. While there are computer and written-based tests for this, most children or parents often give up halfway through the tedious tests and are often given false diagnoses.

CogCubed aimed to create a tangible gaming platform to detect ADHD through simple games and monitoring sense shaking, tilting and touching of the cubes. The flagship game “Groundskeeper” requires the player to touch the “Mallet” cube to the “Groundhog” cubes without disrupting the surrounding cubes. The game is stimulating enough to bring out the ADHD sensibilities of children playing the game.

The Games for Health Journal posted promising results in 2013 showing that Groundskeeper confirmed the diagnosis of 70% in all categories of ADHD, in all test subjects.

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Mango Health by trialcard (2013)

Platform: iOS Mobile

Themes: Wellness and Health

Mango Health on the surface seems like any other pill reminder and medication manager, a basic health app. But what turns this app into a gamification win for healthcare apps is the built-in reward system.

While the app itself is extremely user-friendly and engaging, it is also free to use. This means the many features included in the app include an all-important drug interaction feature, which alerts patients to whether any of the medications they are taking interact adversely with each other.

Mango Health has a simple point-based reward system. This means, that anytime a user logs proper medication usage, they receive points, which can then be redeemed as actual money donations to charities or gift cards to stores through the app.

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Monster Guard by Red Cross (2014)

Platform: iOS and Android

Themes: Training and Simulation

Keeping kids entertained while trying to teach them life lessons can seem impossible right? Not anymore. Monster Guard is a free app by the Red Cross that is directed toward children aged 7 to 11.

In Monster Guard children go through the “Monster Guard Academy '', facing real-life challenges through gamified means and learning how to survive dangerous situations such as house fires, floods, tornadoes and even a pandemic through roleplay.

The app also includes information packets that are easy to consume for the age group and how to cope with stressful situations. The Red Cross believes that teaching kids at a young impressionable age in a fun way will also cause the adults around them to potentially learn some life-saving techniques.

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