A Brief Overview of Gamification in Healthcare

Use of games in healthcare has become a focus among startup companies, largely concentrating on combining self-monitoring with games. The question remains if these new gamification products can lead to sustainable modification in healthcare behavior, especially among those who need it most. Gamification developers want to focus on the self-management of chronic conditions. Healthcare providers want to offer games to their clients, but privacy restrictions have added some legal an ethical wrinkles in the area of health care gaming design. Privacy restrictions are making it difficult to design healthcare feedback competitive gaming designs for those who would most benefit from them.

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NewU

Integrate Popular Fitness Tracking Apps With NewU

NewU is a free IOS app (and apparently not yet available for Android platforms) designed to integrate with all popular fitness tracking apps. Once that integration occurs, calorie burn statistics are pushed into NewU and converted into Sweetsweats. If the user changes his or her fitness tracking hardware – perhaps from FitBit® to MapMyFitness® or from Jawbone UP® to Apple Health® — NewU is supposed to seamlessly reintegrate with each new tracker. Moreover, NewU also provides users with access to what is described as “curated” health and fitness goods and services such as food, gyms, spas, nutritionists and other resources. NewU also has its own flavor of “selfies,” called “Fitfies,” and users can share them to inspire friends and earn bonus points when a user’s fitness partners join NewU. Bonus Sweetsweats are also awarded for your health and fitness-related recommendations.

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