mHealth games offer ‘fun’ way to boost patient engagement

Some see mHealth gaming as an effort to appeal to emotion over reason. To compel true patient engagement, they say, one has to play to the passions.

“We in healthcare have for too long been overly targeting the rational mind,” says Tryggvi Thorgeirsson, MD, MPH, a physician at the National University Hospital of Iceland and a researcher of behavioral economics at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Most digital health solutions are reason-based,” whereas efforts to change patients’ behaviors should focus more on “finding meaningful ways of giving you instant gratification and rewards.”

Read the article at mHealth Intelligence.

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