Gamification: Improving Patient Adherence in mHealth for Diabetes Management

Abstract

Diabetes is a chronic disease requiring a strict management. MyDiabetes is a mobile application for type I diabetes management that, as other mHealth applications, faces the challenge of user adherence and motivation. Here the authors describe the application’s redesign and the implementation of different gamification techniques to tackle these challenges. The transition to the current version of the application was made in two stages. The first addressed the redesign of the application and started implementing gamification techniques. The second stage improved some of the features and added others. After the second stage, a new survey was conducted to evaluate the implemented features and improvements. While objectives and incentives to increase the number of records were endorsed by 56.5% of users, health directed badges and objectives increased the acceptance rate to 91.3%. Long-term effectiveness of the gamification approach will be done in the future.

Publication
Handbook of Research on Solving Modern Healthcare Challenges With Gamification
Pedro Brandão
Pedro Brandão
Assistant Professor

I am an assistant professor at Univ. Porto, with research interests in net security, net protocols and mHealth

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