How Gamification Emerged as An Effective Tool in Healthcare Mobile App Development?

There has been a significant surge in the number of Android and IOS apps, especially during the pandemic, but very few of them tend to be considerably engaging and capture the interests of the users. Approximately, more than 30,000 new IOS apps, and nearly more than 100,000 new Android apps are every month in the app stores. But most of them don’t particularly stand out in the fierce competition to offer something unique, fun, and entertaining, and grab user engagement. Clean, attractive, a jibing UI (user interface), and seamless navigation within the apps are some of the primary factors that developers have to adhere to, in order to gain a positive feedback from the users. Hence, functionality is pertinent, and a poor UX can consequently lead to the failure of the app.

Implementation of gamification in apps can be an influential mobile app user engagement & retention strategy, especially in the healthcare industry. The major goal of any mHealth application is to improve the health of the user, and hence, if it is reminding you about your daily fitness activities and engaging you in performing numerous fitness tasks to achieve your respective goals, then users are more likely to use it. Game play commands your attention, thrills you with regular tasks, taps your innate strength, and ultimately helps in attaining more productive and effective skills. Furthermore, gamified services increasingly motivate and help users to traverse through the bumpy road of physical and mental change. Thus, gamification is going to be progressively prevalent in healthcare.

How Can Gamification Favor the mHealth Applications?

Gamification is a strategy that includes gaming dynamics, techniques, and certain elements in the non-gaming applications to make task enjoyable and entertaining, solve problems, and engage audiences. Some of the classic gamification elements extensively used are mystery boxes, badges, leader boards, and competition. Gamification essentially corroborates the overall value creation of the user. Attractive rewards and exciting activities in mHealth apps eliminate the monotony of regular everyday activities, and inculcate a great deal of interest among the users to achieve their daily goals, which helps boosting the user engagement. Games can be utterly intriguing for most people who tend to complete further challenges every time they level. This appreciably contributes to increased user engagement.                                                                                                                                                                          
In addition, implementing necessary gamification elements, depending on the users of the mHealth applications, can give users a substantial edge over the competitors in this ferocious competitive space. Hence, implementing innovative elements in the app can make the app all the more interesting and enthralling, which might help attract huge number of new users.

Nowadays, social media is becoming increasingly popular and prevalent among the millennials, and hence, they tend to share their daily activities, task or long-term fitness goals that they have achieved on mHealth apps. This consequently improves the awareness about mHealth apps, thus influencing more people to adopt healthcare apps integrated with gamification.

The Way Ahead for Gamification in Healthcare

There has been an expeditious surge in the internet penetration across the globe over the past 2 years since the Covid-19 pandemic. This simple factor significantly widens the user base who are looking out for exciting, productive, and engaging mHealth apps. In addition, people around the world are more focused about their fitness than they were ever before, and hence, they engage in regular fitness activities to achieve their daily goals. Furthermore, prominent pharmaceutical companies are heavily investing in mHealth apps to improve the users’ health through gamification. Thus, gamification is surely going to become an effective tool in healthcare in the coming years.

About the Author(s)

 

Shreeras Shetty

Shreeras Shetty is currently working in the content writing industry and has a Bachelor’s degree in management studies specializing in marketing. He is passionate about writing and is gaining a significant experience in the Market Research Industry. Outside the office, Shreeras is actively engaged in recreational activities like playing football, trekking, traveling, and athletics.