Serious games for healthcare

Games for healthcare: what are the benefits?

Why is serious gaming so valuable especially for healthcare? That has to do – besides the fun and effectiveness – with all kinds of practical and organizational advantages. Serious games for healthcare are, for example:

Cost-saving

Healthcare costs have been rising for years and healthcare needs to be better and cheaper at the same time. Serious games can be a solution to this. An example: instead of receiving ten treatments from a physical therapist, it is possible to do part of the exercises at home with a game that gives the therapist direct insight into your progress. Based on the data from the game, the treatment can be tailored entirely to your needs. This saves a lot of time and money. An example from our own portfolio with such a measurement system is The Skating Game.

Measurable and adaptive

This brings us directly to the second advantage: care must be evidence-based . Games can provide very clear statistics. How often has the game been played and what deviation does the left have compared to the right? Where before you could picture your fidelity to the exercises a little nicer than had actually been the case, now your practitioner can say to you, ‘Well, in the EHR I see that you have done the exercises zero times…’ Of course, a good serious game ensures that this situation does not occur. After all, it is fun to play and designed to maintain the motivation to do the exercise.

Safer

To stay with the example of physical therapy exercises for a moment: research shows that after their appointment with the physical therapist, a proportion of people do not remember how to do the exercises they have learned at home. They then fail to do the exercise correctly or even suffer injuries due to incorrect posture. In a game, you can repeat the explanation again and again and even rule out people doing the exercise incorrectly, as with the Skating game. In short: serious gaming ensures that people can practice safely. This applies in all kinds of areas and sectors. Think, for example, of a game in which doctors in training can perform a trial operation or action as in our project VR training “Resuscitation of newborn babies.. If it goes wrong then no real person suffers; after all, it’s just a game.

Learning at your own pace

Suppose you are a physician assistant and work in an emergency room. You then learn from the situations that present themselves. Maybe you see a broken leg thirty times, but have never practiced with pneumonia. You learn in real life, but that also makes you dependent on what comes in. In a game, you can specify exactly what you want to learn. Even better, you don’t have to wait an hour for your first patient, but can simply continue learning at your own pace. Serious games make learning easier and are adaptable to your learning needs. At home, on the train, at work. With a serious healthcare game, you can learn and game when it’s convenient, at your own level.

Accessible, threshold-reducing and connecting

In conclusion, a good serious game designer ensures that the game works in a user-friendly and intuitive way, so no in-depth technical knowledge is needed. Moreover, they can often be played at home, together with family or friends. This has a connecting and threshold-reducing effect. For example: Learning sign language with a serious game (8D & Pento, 2019) or get started with Assisted Communication via any mobile device you have in your home (8D & Deelkracht, 2023). Interactive, personal, at home, together – all things that make it easier to learn new things, continue treatments and address issues together with your loved ones.