Gamified medical content – why so serious?
Fought any dragons recently? Why not fight cancer cells and save (virtual) human lives instead? All jokes aside, putting medical content into a gaming environment is a valuable tool to increase disease awareness or introduce different therapy options to HCPs.
HCPs are sent pages of information daily, so games may bring some recreation to their daily grind, whilst they learn.
“Gamification” is fun! – in a previous article on this topic, we outlined how this could be incorporated into the tight schedule of HCPs. Here we share two examples of how gaming environments could be used in medical education.
Tower Defence Games
In a typical tower defence game, you are responsible for building towers and defending your base against a relentless stream of opponents. The aim is to stop waves of opponents reaching your base at the end of a maze. Your foes come in different sizes, with unique abilities/strengths, making the battle all the more difficult and complex. You can develop new or improve established towers with the help of points that you gather from each opponent that you fend off.
This genre allows for several adjustments that make it perfect for medical education. Picture this: Instead of battling typical opponents, the player could fight germs, viruses, or malignant cells with drugs, diagnostic tools and more.
Tower defence game in a medical context as imagined by infill.
It doesn’t stop there. The maze might change according to affected organs or the indication, which would open a window for a level system increasing the players motivation. By answering indication-related questions, players earn bonuses such as extra points or new and improved towers to aid in the fight. These educational questions not only increase the game’s educational value but also create awareness of the company sponsoring the game.
Simulations
While tower defence games put the player in a fantasy world, imagine instead simulations that resemble the real world.
There are many guides on how to run a doctor’s office and it is important to read through those, too. However, wouldn’t it be more convenient way to simulate these as well? There are a lot of things a new doctor must pay attention to. From finding the perfect location to organising their employees’ social area, this game has it all. They may need to think about organising a locum for their next holiday, keeping up with all the fixed costs and what happens when it is time to replace an old ultrasonic device? In this game, the HCP will face all of these challenges and more without any real-life consequences.
These are just two ideas out of many. If you are thinking about creating educational games, feel free to ask for our advice. You can get in touch with us via info@infill.com. We are happy to support you in their development!
