How Gaming Apps Can Impact the Healthcare Industry

Black tie. Fancy dinner. Nice speech. Time to go home. A normal healthcare fundraiser, right? The next fundraiser you go to, though, may not be so typical—the industry is becoming more and more creative in engaging with its audience.

Gaming apps are already aiding patient recovery, promoting healthy lifestyles and complementing medical training. Why not utilize gaming apps to engage potential donors and benefactors?

On March 22, Greenville Health System hosted an event called Experience the Dream, a fundraiser to help raise money for medical scholarships at the new Greenville campus for the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. In order to create a unique experience for event guests, GHS brought in the help of Gamemaster, Inc.

Medical students at the University of South Carolina acted as tour guides for what turned out to be far more than a look at the facilities. Using Questalot, the Gamemaster team designed a tour for attendees that turned into a disease outbreak that required quarantine and a hunt for a cure.

Racing from the cadaver and multidisciplinary labs and into the patient care rooms, guests encountered various tasks and dilemmas, including a “fire” in the surgery wing, a belligerent patient and a green blood sample.

With their app and the power of good story-telling, the Gamemaster team took what could have been an ordinary tour and made it into an engaging activity that combined a little urgency with some humor to keep the guests on their toes, all while showcasing the facilities and introducing the students.

The possibilities of gaming apps only seem to exponentially increase the more they’re put to use. Why give your audience something generic when the power to create a memorable experience is at your fingertips?

Here are a couple of potential uses for gaming apps that healthcare organizations should consider outside the realm of patient therapy:

Events

Utilize gaming apps to create an interactive environment in which stakeholders, donors and benefactors can immerse themselves in the inner workings of the facility. This allows them to enjoy an engaging experience, all the while learning about the value of the service offers.

Keeping in touch with patients

Offer a game that gets patients involved in their own health. Connect your organization’s patients to a game that they can access via their mobile devices in which they compete to achieve the highest rank by completing a series of challenges. This keeps them active in the pursuit of improving their own health, but also allows for continuous engagement between you and your patients.

Waiting room apps

Patients can compete against others in the waiting room while they sit and wait for their name to be called for their scheduled appointment. How many times have you found yourself sitting in a waiting room, bored out of your mind? By creating a game that patients can immerse themselves in, the pain of the wait it lessens and the unpleasant experience of going to the doctor’s office is made just a bit more enjoyable.

These are just a few ideas. What other suggestions do you have for using gaming apps within the healthcare industry to engage with patients, stakeholders, donors and benefactors?

Jeanne Petrizzo – Writer/Editor