JMIR Serious Games

People with cancer often experience stress. Digital health interventions (DHIs) can help individuals increase momentary relaxation. Breeze is a gamified breathing training that can be embedded into DHIs. Its effectiveness in controlled cross-sectional studies has been demonstrated. However, adherence to Breeze and its effect on momentary relaxation in longitudinal interventional studies has yet to be investigated.

Hong Kong faces a rapidly aging population, with many older adults not meeting recommended physical-activity levels and struggling to maintain long-term exercise adherence. Exergaming offers an accessible, technology-supported way to promote health conditions while providing immediate feedback and task variability among older adults.

Physical inactivity is a major public health issue among college students, often exacerbated by academic pressures and lifestyle shifts. Traditional exercise interventions often face challenges with adherence due to low motivation and engagement. Immersive virtual reality (VR)–based exercise interventions may address these barriers by providing interactive and motivating experiences, yet empirical evidence regarding their psychological and physiological benefits remains scarce.

Exergames have emerged as effective interventions for promoting physical activity and preventing type 2 diabetes (T2D). Kinect-based exergames have demonstrated improvements in exercise adherence and health outcomes, but their high cost and reliance on specialized hardware hinder widespread home-based adoption. Recent advances in computer vision now enable monocular-camera-based systems, offering a potentially cost-effective and scalable alternative for promoting physical activity at home.

Immersive virtual reality-assisted therapy (VRT) is a relational therapy for distressing voices in psychosis. Like AVATAR therapy (AT), VRT centres on therapist-facilitated dialogues with a digital avatar representing a voice. Unlike AT, VRT employs immersive virtual reality (VR). While participant experiences of AT have been explored, therapist perspectives remain unexamined, and for VRT, neither participant nor therapist experiences have been studied. Understanding these perspectives is essential to inform optimization of therapy, future research, and implementation.

Background: Internet gaming disorder (IGD) causes neurocognitive deficits and brain dysfunction. Traditional interventions require specialists and incur high costs, while progressive aerobic training (PAT) seems more practical. But its effect on IGD and the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear.

Staff working in residential care homes (RCHs) have played a significant role in preventing the spread of infection among residents, visitors, and staff. Providing continuous professional training to the staff is essential. Current infection control training mostly rests on short educational talks or one-to-one reminders in the RCHs. A blended mode of online interactive games and face-to-face consultations was now proposed as a new way to conduct infection control training in the RCHs.

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Hand motor dysfunctions significantly reduce the performance of stroke survivors. This affects their motor task abilities to perform effectively. Patients receive slow intervention due to interventional limitations in stroke rehabilitation, which pose challenges for sustaining enduring improvements. The immersive virtual reality (VR) games in this study utilized an innovative approach to cognitive engagement within visual training feedback to attain long-lasting improvements.

Eswatini has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates worldwide (24.8% among people aged ≥15 years), with unprotected heterosexual transmission accounting for more than 90% of new HIV infections in the country. Low HIV risk perception is known to influence risk behavior. Mobile phone technology is growing rapidly, offering opportunities for technology-driven interventions to improve HIV risk perception and prevention.

Timely detection and intervention of visual deficits during early childhood are essential to prevent lifelong impairments. However, reliable assessment of visual function in young children remains a persistent challenge. Conventional pediatric vision tests depend on subjective feedback and sustained cooperation, limiting their accuracy and scalability in real-world settings. Contrast sensitivity function (CSF) is a sensitive and fundamental index of visual performance, yet existing pediatric CSF assessments lack objectivity and adaptability. To bridge this methodological gap, we developed a novel eye-tracking–based gamified CSF (ETGCSF) tool that integrates gaze-based detection with interactive gameplay to objectively quantify CSF in an engaging and child-centered manner.

Informal caregivers play a crucial role in home care and many lack formal training, potentially compromising patient safety. Immersive virtual reality (VR) offers an innovative approach to training by simulating real-life caregiving scenarios in a risk-free environment. Prior to implementation, the environments and the technique’s feasibility and acceptability must be assessed by the professionals who will use it to train caregivers, establishing a performance benchmark based on experienced health care professionals.