May 10, 2026
Headlines

Health

Market Ripe for Health and Wellness Gamification Startups

Kevin Shane06 mins

A new study shows that employers are increasingly relying on gamification to increase employee health engagement. According to Buck Constultants, 62% of employers consider gamification the most effective strategy in encouraging employees to improve their health and at least 31% will adopt at least one new health-related gamification strategy in the coming year.

As healthcare costs continue to rise, employers are facing new pressure to encourage employees to be proactive about their health. While there is still insufficient data to determine whether employee health incentive programs are actually saving companies money, it seems that most businesses are not waiting to find out.

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Fooya, the Crowdfunded Game from India to Teach Healthy Eating

Alex Landa54 mins

Food fights in the cafeteria are usually not well-liked by adults. Virtual food fights that promote education about food, health, and wellness is a totally different story.

Fooya is a third-person, single-player food fight game meant to replicate the childhood activity. FriendsLearn recently used KickStarter to raise money to expand the game with a multiplayer expansion of the current single-player version which will be titled Fooya with Friends.

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Nike and TechStars Betting Big on Gamification and the Quantified Self for 10 New Startups

Ivan Kuo35 mins

If you weren’t sure where the future of fitness technology was heading towards, let the 10 winners of TechStars’ new Nike+ fitness startup accelerator give you a clue: it’s going to be all about gamification and the quantified self.

Nike and TechStars first announced the launch of their digital fitness startup accelerator program in December 2012 to find startups that will help people lead more active lives. As of yesterday, they have officially picked the 10 lucky startups that will participate in their inaugural 3 month class. Each startup will receive $20,000 in funding, a workspace, and mentorship from big names like Foursquare Co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, TechStars founder David Cohen, and Nike’s VP of digital sport, Stegan Olander. TechStars will receive a 6% stake in equity of each of the companies in exchange for their support.

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A Comprehensive Overview of How Games Help Healthcare in 2013

Sudarshan Gopaladesikan89 mins

Gamification and healthcare may be the next best thing since the invention of bread and butter. I recently read an article on 3 different ways that video games can improve health and immediately became curious as to other research going on in this area. Since GSummit 2013 is fast approaching, I would like to take the time to provide a brief comprehensive overview of how games and healthcare are converging in harmony in 2013.

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Study: First-Person Shooters Can Improve Multitasking Ability

Ivan Kuo85 mins

Parents might have a tough time arguing against videogames if their kids begin to learn about all of the potential benefits from playing them.

Just a few days ago, we reported on a study which showed that dyslexic children could improve their reading skills and attention span by playing fast-paced videogames. Now another study has emerged, which has shown playing first-person shooter videogames like Call of Duty can improve multitasking abilities.

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How Companies Use Big Data & The Quantified Self Movement For Insight

Sudarshan Gopaladesikan109 mins

The quantified self-movement (QS) is a hot topic in 2013 and focuses on using sensors and other trackers to acquire self-knowledge for the end goal of gaining deeper insight about personal habits. For example, I use Nike+ to log my daily run performance. I also make a list of my diet for that day and compare it to how well I performed. I am hoping that after a couple of months of use, I can figure out what the optimal diet is for me before I go for a run or engage in physical activities such as sports. Other examples can include measuring coffee intake vs. productivity or sleep activity vs. diet. With the inclusion of Big Data—the ability to process large amounts of data quickly—people are looking to contextualize all the data available on their laptops, mobile devices, or even social media platforms.

Whether or not you are actively participating in the QS movement, companies are adopting the method to find new ways to measure performance metrics. By measuring employee activity through sensors, these new metrics will be aggregated to redefine what being a successful worker means.

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Study: Video Games Can Improve Reading Ability of Dyslexic Children

Ivan Kuo44 mins

Most of the news surrounding gamification for health tends to deal with weight-loss and fighting childhood obesity but what about some of the positive effects? We’ve seen one study that shows videogames can offer “simulation-therapy” in improving vision. According to the HuffingtonPost, a new study has emerged that claims playing fast-paced games could even have cognitive benefits of improving the reading skills of dyslexic children.

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GSummit 2012 Behind the Scenes: Seth Cooper, Foldit

Ivan Kuo51 mins

(6/26 Gamification Expert Interviews Unlocked)

Every week until GSummit SF 2013, we’ll be unlocking some special content from last year to give you a preview on what to expect this April 16 – 18.

Watch Seth Copper explain how Foldit was able to motivate citizen scientists to play for the greater good:

To see more expert gamification videos, visit our Video page or Subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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Cancer Research UK Hosts Hackathon to Build a Smartphone Research Game

Ivan Kuo13 mins

This past weekend, top developers at Facebook, Google and Amazon Web Services joined research academics and public attendees for a Cancer Research UK hackathon to utilize crowdsourced genetic data and turn it into a smartphone game, tentatively called GeneRun.

The hackathon’s goal is to produce a game that makes use of crowdsourced “citizen scientists” (a la Fold.it) to quickly interpret and analyze data that will facilitate research for cancer drug interventions.

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ddr classroom edition

UnitedHealthcare Teams up with KONAMI to Produce DDR Classroom Edition

Ivan Kuo13 mins

Going through a strange time in my adolescence, I was very fond of playing Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) as a means of being able to play videogames while being active. I can attribute much of my adult lower body strength simply to my stomping and jumping to fast-paced Japanese music and it pleases me to no end that UnitedHealthcare and KONAMI are working together to bring these benefits to entire classrooms.

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Learn More About Viral Infections with the Killer Flu Game

Ivan Kuo22 mins

If you haven’t already noticed, the 2013 strain of influenza is reaching “epidemic” proportions and people all over your Facebook have been strangely bragging about contracting this “flu thing”.

While there’s little we can do besides avoiding other sick people and bathing in hand sanitizer, there is a way to educate ourselves more about how influenza spreads and avoid blowing the entire problem out of proportion.

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Health Insurers are Using Competitions to Gamify Weight Loss

Kevin Shane03 mins

Many of us agree that the ultimate rewards for successful weight loss are looking great and feeling better. However, how many times have you lost sight of your goal because of the time and work it takes to get there? By using games in health, notably in weight loss, dieters are able to compete and reap rewards to encourage them to stick to their diet plans.

A recent article in AIS Health describes how health insurers are getting involved to keep dieters on track. United Health, Aetna, and Humana have developed competitions for dieters to encourage participation.

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