16 Pioneering Companies Integrating Gamification into Digital Healthcare

The application of games in healthcare is known as gamification of healthcare. Gamification can be seen on personal computers, smartphones, and in doctors' offices. It adds an element of fun to all endpoints in the healthcare sector. (To understand gamification, please readDecoding Hot English Terms in Internet Healthcare:Gamification）

Games are fun, which means that dull and rigid healthcare can also be more engaging and enjoyable. Games are also immediate, as we can access them anytime via smartphones or other mobile devices. Value-based healthcare emphasizes prevention, which often occurs through changes in behavior, and some games can help players achieve this preventive goal. As the millennial generation ages and their demand for medical services grows, alongside the rise of gaming among millennials, the application of gamification in healthcare becomes increasingly feasible. VCBeat has previously introduced several overseas innovative companies incorporating gamification concepts (further reading:Fitness Experts Recommend the 7 Best Gamified Fitness Apps  ；Mining New Frontiers: Games to the Rescue of Health), to fully understand gamification, let’s take a closer look at the following 16 companies.

1. Audax Health Solution – A Little More Health Every Day



Audax believes that consumers can and should be active participants in managing their own health. Audax provides users with a platform to develop personalized lifestyle plans, communicate with others, track progress toward goals, and earn rewards by achieving objectives related to adopting healthy lifestyles. The company’s flagship product, Zensey, is an end-to-end HIPAA-compliant digital health platform that integrates social networking and gamification mechanisms. Key features include Health Risk Assessments (HRA), personalized recommendations, goal setting, online health screenings, and one-stop data tracking. The company recently signed an agreement with CIGNA to make the platform available to CIGNA’s 12 million customers.

2. Mango Health– Make medication management easier

Mango Health complies with HIPAA standards and aims to improve medication adherence. It provides consumers with an engaging new way to manage medications and nutritional supplements, thereby achieving health management goals. Users receive reminders to ensure they never miss a dose, track medication timing, and earn points that can be redeemed for real-world rewards.

3. Reflexion Health, Inc. – MS Kinect for Physical Therapy


Based on Microsoft Kinect for Windows, San Diego-based Reflextion Health offers physical therapy solutions. Their product, Vera, is a patient interface designed to guide users through their exercises and ensure adherence to scheduled physical therapy rehabilitation sessions. The system then sends performance data and other information to clinicians as feedback. Currently, the company’s pilot research centers, established in partnership with collaborators, are located in Boston and at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. Additionally, the company recently raised $7.5 million from West Health Investment Fund.

4. Ayogo– Psychological Games in Patient Self-Management


Ayogo develops mobile health social games to educate and motivate patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes, facilitating long-term behavioral change. Ayogo has established significant partnerships with several influential organizations worldwide, including the Joslin Diabetes Center (Harvard Medical School), Sanofi-Aventis, the Center for Computational Medicine at the University of Southern California (Keck School of Medicine), and the Diabetes Foundation.

Its product, Empower, assists patients diagnosed with chronic diseases in managing their treatment. By leveraging the participatory nature of social networks, as well as the powerful drivers of gamification and entertainment, Empower helps patients establish new healthy habits tailored to their specific medical conditions. Empower facilitates patient adherence to medical advice and recommendations for lifestyle modifications. Utilizing our proprietary behavior change framework, Empower engages patients with specific medical conditions through a series of activities, self-reporting, and social interactions. Based on individual patient needs, Empower provides incentive-based rewards to patients who successfully sustain behavioral changes.

5. EveryMove – Earn Healthcare Rewards by Staying Active


EveryMove allows users to choose how they earn rewards by staying active. Friends can cheer them on, and users can track their progress and earn reward points. The program is free for users. Rewards are provided by brands, employers, and health plan providers. When users earn rewards, EveryMove collects a small fee from the reward providers. The company recently announced that it had raised $2.6 million in funding, with investors including venture capitalists and major health plan providers. This startup has attracted numerous healthcare suppliers due to its aim of finding ways to improve consumer engagement and encourage positive consumer behaviors. Currently, EveryMove will use the influx of capital to prepare for other projects launching later this year.

6. CogCubed– Cognitive Games in Healthcare


Founder Kurt Green pointed out that CogCubed aims to assist in diagnosing children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and adults suffering from other conditions characterized by impaired self-control. The first game designed by CogCubed, called Groundskeeper, measures behavioral data while patients play, thereby providing precise data for professionals to analyze whether a patient has ADHD. Its purpose is to engage the attention of ADHD patients through gaming, addressing the previous challenges of being unable to measure their behavior and obtaining imprecise data. The company also plans to develop several interactive games in the near future.

7. RespondWell – A Kinect-Based Interactive Physical Therapy Platform


Adhering to daily rehabilitation routines is challenging. Failure to follow prescribed protocols can lead to inappropriate treatment, frequent therapist visits, and costly hospital readmissions. To address this issue, RespondWell leverages gamification to encourage, challenge, and reward patients, thereby promoting adherence to physical therapy. The RespondWell platform utilizes Microsoft Kinect sensors on Windows-based systems to track patient performance in clinical or home settings. Providers are shifting toward outcome-driven models, leveraging the platform’s capabilities for patient monitoring, rehabilitation tracking, and data analytics and prediction. Patients can even access the system in clinics or at home without Kinect sensors.

8. CoheroHealth- Integrated Mobile Medication Adherence Solution


Cohero’s sensor-based patented technology integrates an inhalation sensor and a mobile spirometer with a patient-centric mobile application. This patient-centric app, called AsthmaHero, enables automatic tracking and reminders, featuring an engaging rewards system and a gamified user interface. Cohero’s integrated solution offers bidirectional, HIPAA-compliant integration with the EPIC EMR system, providing seamless asthma management for both patients and providers.

9. GymPact – Earn Cash by Living a Healthy Life


Accountability is a powerful tool for pursuing health. Pact, formerly known as GymPact, is one of a series of apps that deliver on this promise. Users create a “pact” to adhere to a specific fitness regimen, which may include gym visits, logging meals, or consuming a certain amount of vegetables daily. If they fail to meet their commitments on any given day, users must pay a small fee. However, if they fulfill their pact, they receive financial rewards funded by the penalty pool collected from those who missed their goals. The app also aims to promote honesty among all users by allowing them to vote on uploaded photos and other forms of verification demonstrating healthy behaviors.

10.SuperBetter – Gamify Your Personal Resilience


What is the underlying motivation? Regardless of whether goals are large or small, they help users stay focused on their objectives within the game. In the game, users must identify the challenges they face; it also provides “power-ups” that serve as encouragement, “villains” that make goals more difficult to achieve, and “quests” that offer support along the way. Our aim is to build psychological, emotional, and social resilience when confronting adversities such as injury, illness, or other health issues. The overarching goal is to achieve an “epic win,” a major objective set at the very beginning of the game.

11. Customer Engagement in GameMetrix – Health & Wellness


GameMetrix has created numerous games, including a Jeopardy!-style trivia game called Triviality, designed to reinforce diabetes knowledge. Players answer a series of questions, compare their scores, compete with friends, climb to the top of the leaderboards, and redeem points for prizes such as test strips or books on diabetes. Users can return to the game to retest their knowledge and earn more points. GameMetrix also enables insurers, physicians, and other clients to customize games for patients.

12. Syandus– Intelligent Simulation Learning Technology


Have you ever truly understood what is happening within your body? Through simulation technology, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can visualize how their choices directly impact their physical health. Physicians can upload medical histories into a “virtual patient” model, allowing real patients to introduce additional variables such as smoking habits, medication regimens, and environmental factors. The simulation results demonstrate precisely how these variables affect the body. Patients can then modify and adjust these variables to gain a better understanding of how their bodies respond to different choices—deepening their insight into how their actions influence their well-being.

13. Akili Interactive Labs– The More Scientific, the More Gamified



Akili is a class of therapeutic and monitoring tools that combine cutting-edge neuroscience with the look and feel of top-tier video games. With such an engaging product that has undergone rigorous scientific validation, the company is seeking to produce efficient healthcare solutions. The Akili video game platform aims to quantify and improve individuals’ ability to cope with cognitive interference (distractions and interruptions), which affects their attention, planning, and decision-making capabilities. These deficits are common symptoms of many neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, as well as psychiatric conditions including ADHD, autism, and depression. The company recently signed an agreement with Pfizer to test the ability of Akili’s mobile video game platform (the “EVO Project”) to detect cognitive differences in healthy older adults at risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease.

14. Hubbub– Have fun together



 

Hubbub Health is a simple, instant solution for enterprises to improve their employees’ overall health and productivity. Leveraging cutting-edge technology and social gamification approaches, Hubbub inspires and motivates employees to lead happier and healthier lives. Early research findings indicate that engaged players who receive support from at least 52 friends can achieve an average weight loss of 1.5 kilograms!
Hubbub’s tools, features, and services are designed to maximize engagement (healthy happiness!) and provide a hassle-free, easy-to-use “turnkey” solution.

15. Fix – Enjoyment, Matching



FIX is built on the belief that a healthy lifestyle can enhance all aspects of life. It has developed high-quality interactive games that promote health and daily physical activity within enjoyable and social environments. Their first game, UtiliFIT™, provides a platform for users to become active both individually and collectively. Through its psychologically engaging and socially oriented design, the game makes exercise fun, convenient, and motivating for people of all fitness levels. This game not only promotes a healthy lifestyle but also offers a shared, enjoyable daily experience that keeps users actively engaged.

16. Welltok – Optimize Health, Maximize Rewards



Welltok is undertaking a fundamental transformation of how consumers optimize their health and maximize their benefits. Welltok’s pioneering CaféWell health optimization platform orchestrates an ecosystem that integrates applications, tracking devices, content, communities, wellness programs, and disease management solutions for population health management, creating personalized health pathways to drive behavioral change among consumers. The platform aligns actions and behaviors with appropriate incentives and rewards to help consumers achieve their health and wellness goals, ranging from stress reduction and smoking cessation to the management of diabetes or depression. Welltok recently completed a Series C financing round of over $22 million, becoming one of the best-capitalized digital health companies today. It has emerged as a leader through its partnership with IBM, leveraging Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities to engage consumers in conversations about their health activities.

AcknowledgementsGuided by Zhao Xinyuan, CEO of Beijing Yintai Kelong Technology Co., Ltd.