Gamification for mHealth - A Review of Playful Mobile Healthcare

Abstract

Mobile technology is an everyday companion, which can be utilized to support and even to enable prevention, diagnostics and therapy in healthcare. Repetitive tasks, particularly when managing unwanted circumstances such as coping with chronic diseases, could be exhausting. Nevertheless, the patients' compliance is needed especially in context of these diseases. Therefore, gamification as a tool for transforming bothersome tasks into rewarding experiences could help to overcome this burden. In this paper the authors present a literature review, which examines the state of the art of gamification in mobile healthcare.