JMIR Serious Games

Fatigue is a common and debilitating side effect of chronic diseases, significantly impacting patients’ quality of life. While physical exercise and psychological treatments have been shown to reduce fatigue, patients often struggle with adherence to these interventions in clinical practice. Game-based eHealth interventions are believed to address adherence issues by making the intervention more accessible and engaging.

Breast cancer patients suffer high levels of psychological and physical pain. Virtual reality (VR) may be an acceptable, safe intervention to alleviate the negative emotions and pain of cancer patients.

Digital mental health interventions could sustainably and scalably prevent and reduce loneliness in older adults. We designed an app containing 29 text-based games and a questionnaire-administering chatbot to stimulate intergenerational contact.

Public health education plays a crucial role in effectively addressing infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. However, existing educational materials often provide only foundational information, and traditional group education faces challenges due to social distancing policies.

Cardiovascular diseases are leading causes of death and morbidity worldwide. CPR and early defibrillation significantly enhance survival rates. Serious Games (SG) improve learning through entertainment. Current strategies target Cardiopulmonary resuscitation for communities and schoolchildren, but none have been validated for children in low-to-middle-income settings. The SG Children Save Hearts, developed in Brazil, teaches the five resuscitation steps according to International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation 2020 guidelines and requires formal usability assessment. The study aimed to evaluate the usability of SG Children Save Hearts among IT and healthcare professionals using the System Usability Scale (SUS). The usability test was conducted in August 2022 in the university's IT department. The game was developed targeting schoolchildren aged 7 to 17. Categorical variables as absolute and relative frequencies, while continuous variables were presented as median with interquartile range (IQR). Normality was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test. Comparisons between IT and healthcare professionals were made using the independent t-test for normal distributions or the Mann-Whitney U test for non-normal distributions. We included 17 volunteers with a mean age of 22 years (IQR 20-26). All participants played the game and completed a 10-question survey on its usability using a Likert-type scale. The final grade was converted to a 0 to 100 scale, with a grade above 70 considered acceptable for a minimum viable product. The mean SUS score was 75 (IQR 72.5-87.5). Healthcare professionals gave higher grades to all five domains compared to IT professionals. The average time spent playing the game was 3.2 minutes. Novel technologies have shown promising results for CPR teaching using active teaching methods, but face challenges in developing countries, such as language barriers, device acquisition, cultural differences, and technical support. To our knowledge, this is the first SG developed in portuguese for brazilian schoolchidren. Despite some usability issues, the SG Children Save Hearts is considered adequate for teaching CPR to schoolchildren in Brazil.

Sleep games are an emerging topic in the realm of serious health game research. However, designing features that are both enjoyable and effective at engaging users, particularly university students, to develop healthy sleep habits remains a challenge.

Video-based error-correction (VBEC) in medical education could offer immediate feedback, promote enhanced learning retention, and foster reflective practice, its application in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training has not been investigated.

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is prevalently causing significant pain, activity limitations, psychological distress, and reduced quality of life. Despite lower limb strength training being a core treatment for knee OA, adherence remains a challenge, prompting the exploration of virtual reality (VR) to improve exercise compliance. Recent research suggests the potential of VR in providing enhanced pain management and functional outcomes for knee OA, necessitating further exploration of immersive VR technology.

Medical non-adherence is a significant problem associated with worse clinical outcomes, higher downstream re-hospitalization rates and a higher use of resources. To improve medication adherence, it is vital for researchers and practitioners to have a solid theoretical understanding of what interventions are likely to work. To achieve this understanding, we propose that researchers should focus on creating small scale laboratory analogues to the larger real-world setting, and determine what interventions, such as nudges or incentives, work to change behaviour in the lab. To do this we took inspiration from the literature on serious games and gamification and experimental economics. We call our approach “Gamified Behavioural Simulation.” In this paper we modelled everyday life as the state of being engaged in a simple but addictive game, illness as being interruptions to the functionality of that game, treatment as being a serious of actions that can be taken to prevent or mitigate those interruptions, and adherence as sticking to a prescribed rule for the application of those actions.

Children diagnosed with cancer can be subjected to undergo radiotherapy. Children and their families have described that the treatment induces feelings of fear and anxiety. Therefore, a web-based serious game was developed as a psychological preparation for children who are going to undergo radiotherapy. In an earlier stage, children with experience of radiotherapy had been part of the developmental process.

The video game industry has introduced a new form of monetization through microtransactions. A controversial example has been the so called `loot-boxes´ as virtual objects, which are randomized and bought with legal money. In recent years, LBs have come to connect two distinct problem behaviors, namely Internet Gaming Disorder and Online Gambling Disorder. Many association studies have been conducted between the three constructs, but few have delved into the relationship of problematic use of loot boxes with Internet Gaming Disorder and Online Gambling Disorder

Adolescent internet gaming disorder (IGD) was associated with severe harm, including suicidal ideation. While suicidal ideation was predictive of completed suicides, further research is required to clarify the association between IGD and suicidal ideation among adolescents, as well as the mechanisms involved.