JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Chronic disease self-management is a public health issue of worldwide concern, and gamification is an emerging strategy for chronic disease self-management to improve patients' participation in self-management. Some studies have summarized the gamification design of chronic disease self-management from the perspective of electronic health technology, but haven’t mentioned the differences in design methods, functions and evaluations of the gamification design of self-management in different chronic diseases.

Objective:

This scoping review aims to synthesize the characteristics of realization forms, functions and evaluation of gamification in chronic disease self-management gamification to improve self-management of the chronic disease population.

Methods:

We applied methodological frameworks of the Arksey and O'Malley scoping review and the PRISMA-ScR checklist. As of January 7, 2023, we systemically searched relevant studies from January 2012 to December 2022 from 9 databases. Related data was extracted according to research questions. We calculated the frequencies and charted the quantitative data, coded the extracted material for qualitative content analysis.

Results:

We retrieved 16,221 records, of which 70 met the eligibility criteria. Gamification design for self-management of patients with stroke, cancer, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary heart disease, obesity and hypertension. Almost all studies mentioned technical support of gamification (n = 68, 97.1%), mainly in the form of active video games (n = 58, 82.9%), but less than half mentioned the theoretical basis for gamification (n = 31, 44.3%). There were 37 concepts or theories relevant to gamification design, most of which were in psychology and cross-disciplinarity (n = 33, 89.2%). Gamification in the self-management of chronic diseases was widely recognized, including promoting physical exercise and rehabilitation training (n = 47, 51.6%), increasing initiative of symptom management (n = 15, 16.5%), providing psychological support (n = 14, 15.4%), improving cognitive function (n = 11, 12.1%) and medication adherence (n = 4, 4.4%). 39 studies that mentioned the gamification effect, but we did not find a unified evaluation standard.

Conclusions:

This scoping review focuses on gamification designs for chronic disease self-management and summarizes the realization forms and functions of gamification in self-management of different disease populations. With practice in a gamified virtual environment, patients can not only master the knowledge and skills of self-management in fascinating scenarios but also benefit from gaming experience and make better health-related decisions in real life. It is worth noting that a comprehensive evaluation of the users as well as a personalized and targeted intervention should be developed before gamification.