Healthcare gaming making medical history.

The discipline and art of medicine has made a swinging 180 in the past few decades.  What used to be a patriarchy/matriarchy of “I am the medical professional, just do what I say” is now an Internet fueled “I am the patient, I’ve researched my options, and I need your professional advice.”  So the mindset of medical professionals is changing accordingly to “How do I connect with my patients within THEIR modus operandi?”
Healthcare Gaming is one of many new and exciting approaches that can affect attitude and desire for change that leads to a healthy life.  It incorporates a number of components that appeal to a wide age range and demographic cut of our population:

• It uses technologies such as cell phones (mini-computers with a misnomer!), laptops, even mp3 players that are an interwoven part of our lives.
• It’s fun and challenging and appeals to our competitive nature – an aspect that was previously sorely missing from patient education.
• It can involve solitary or group dynamic participation – allowing healthcare gamers to choose the environment in which they are most comfortable learning about their health.
• It optimizes social media and the connectedness that people often miss when they have a lifestyle or health challenge and feel that they are alone in it.

Building a new patient care strategy with health gaming.

In my entire career I never met a medical professional who wasn’t in the game to improve the patient’s health.   It’s true, healthcare is a business and economic drivers abound, but there still exists an underlying burn to see true improvement in the patient’s health – that’s the ultimate way to keep score for a medical professional.   When it comes to such a novel approach as health gaming, there may be skeptics, but there is no denying that these types of technologies and applications are an important part of their patients’ lives.  So to meet them on their own turf in the health arena is a sensible, though new, strategy.

Also important in this time of economic challenge are the opportunities that exist for new and existing companies to create applications that will revolutionize the healthcare industry, while fulfilling the altruistic goal of truly improving peoples’ lives.  Who doesn’t want to be a part of THAT?

Your challenge.

In future postings, we’ll take a look at some of the very innovative applications that are available or are in the planning stages.   The challenge to you?  Keep coming back to healthGAMERS, find out what’s new, and begin to imagine how it could change the way you practice medicine.

About Beth Frost-Johnson.

Beth is President of Frost-Johnson and Associates, a healthcare technology marketing and business development firm.   Her experience in  all sectors of healthcare – provider groups, multi-hospital system, payers, biomedical devices and healthcare IT, makes her a solid believer that patient-driven technology will be the greatest single strategy to improve our future health and healthcare.

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