Gamification of Health

Dear Colleagues,

Gamification is the process of using game elements in nongame domains [1]. The idea behind this is to motivate users to accomplish activities that often represent a burden for the users themselves. Gamification is used in various domains, e.g., in education to motivate students to learn, or in workplaces to motivate employees to complete often-annoying tasks. Gamification could also be a very big opportunity for health from the perspective of very different stakeholders, from patients for performing physical activity or for being compliant with drug prescriptions, to physicians to complete the compilation of electronic health records, to administrative staff to update data in healthcare information systems, and so on. In this view, this Special Issue is specifically targeted to identify the application of gamification concepts to the everyday activities of people involved with health-related topics. It would be interesting to delineate the research efforts in this path, from the design of possible apps to the evaluation of the use of gamification concepts in health-related applications.

Reference

1. Deterding, S.; Dixon, D.; Khaled, R.; Nacke, L. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (MindTrek '11), New York, NY, USA, 28–30 September 2011, 9–15.

Dr. Marcello Sarini
Guest Editor

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• gamification
• digitalization of health
• apps for promoting healthy behaviors
• intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• serious games
• behavior change
• user experience
• behavioral medicine
• e-Health
• game mechanics