A good addiction? How wearable devices and gamification can change healthcare.

• Author: Andra, Jacob
• Position: Business Trends

While perhaps not as much a FitBit slave as many others, I too succumb to the thrall of the device. Something about hitting step goals, burning more calories than the day before, or rising to the top of my Fitbit friends list appeals to a primal pleasure center. Much like a hardcore gamer beating the next level, I invoke what a 2011 Psychology Today article, "Neuroscience Insights from Video Game & Drug Addiction," refers to as "progressive achievement feedback." Is this such a bad thing? In the case of fitness, no. Not unless you overdo it--my wife has commented on my recent proclivity for house-pacing, a habit that apparently unsettles and annoys her (we're working it out).

Gamifying healthcare

The burgeoning field of health apps seeks to harness this "dopamine-pleasure reward." At the University of Utah's Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, a "Games4Health" challenge awards over $60,000 in prize money for students with a promising health app that incorporates game-like characteristics. Across such categories as the "Clinical Health Challenge" and the "Adolescent Mental Wellbeing Empathy Challenge," participants try to gamify everyday self-care and self-maintenance functions associated with a variety of conditions. Including the human condition. A past winner, Carb Commander, was designed for diabetics but can easily apply to anyone wanting to mitigate the inbound caloric torrent that besets us all.

"In order to win," says Troy D'Ambrosio, "students have to surmount the game/health divide."

D'Ambrosio, who heads Lassonde, explains that traditional video games, while fun, lack the rigor that healthcare demands. Conversely, apps designed by healthcare professionals tend to be anything but gamified. "Nobody enjoys using them," D'Ambrosio says. "For a healthcare app to gain traction, it's got to have the whole trifecta: be fun, meet healthcare standards and address a real health-related issue."

Care Companion seems to fit the bill. The app took second place in last year's Games4Health "Chronic Disease Challenge" competition. Designed around transplant patients and their copious medications, it aims to "encourage compliance and patient-held ownership." In simpler terms, it helps patients remember to take their meds. And the need is real.

"The chances that you get full compliance on a medical regimen deteriorate with each medicine and each change," says Dean Y. Li, M.D., Ph.D. on the app's promo video. It's a lot to keep track of, and many...