Our research agenda for 2H’10 will include advancements in Healthcare Gaming. At a high level, healthcare gaming uses technology interactively to help patients with chronic diseases manage, learn and treat their conditions more effectively. Ellen Hoenig Carlson opined in an article for PharmExec.com that health games and virtual worlds bear the potential to be “game changers” by improving education, provoking greater engagement, and engendering positive behavior to enhance health and wellness.
Our cursory review shows that many of the early players in the Healthcare Gaming or “eGaming” space are tied to larger businesses, and few are independent. This be the result of immature of non-existent revenue models for healthcare gaming – causing a reliance on brand name support to scale a business model.
From a categorization standpoint, we’re linking Healthcare Gaming to the population health management (PHM) and chronic care management sectors (although there are also clear adjacencies to medical care compliance). A few other notable high points:
The Health eGaming marketplace is estimated to be $7 billion driven by exer-gaming ($6.4b) and brain fitness ($267m) according to iConecto market study
- While the majority of today’s health gaming marketplace is focused around exercise and cognitive health improvement, we are beginning to see a much larger role in driving medication and medical care compliance amongst populations with chronic conditions (e.g., Type 1 Diabetes)
- Additionally, studies show gaming such as Wii improves seniors overall quality of life as well such as mental wellness, pain, and social aspects
- According to ESA 2009 study 68% of households play computer or video games, a $62 billion market by 2012
Opportunities in Health eGaming include:
- Advergaming: interactive games for a particular drug serving as a marketing campaign
- Drug Compliance: compliance based games where patient drug regimens are integrated into the interactive experience
- Medical Professional Education: educating medical professionals to prepare communities for catastrophes (ie Burn Center simulation game)
A few players in the space include:
If your business in involved in (or thinking about) the Healthcare Gaming arena, or you’d like to discuss more about our perspectives in PHM, let us know.
Have a great week!