Gamification and Serious Games in a Healthcare Informatics Context

The objective of this literature overview paper is to inform the healthcare informatics reader, who is new to gameful design, and introduce him or her into the domain of serious games and gamification for health. This paper aims to inspire readers by a lower level description of the opportunities offered by gameful design and apply it in the healthcare informatics domain. Furthermore, to ensure that gameful design apps are well implemented, designers and researchers of these technologies need to understand the mechanisms of gameful design and tailor gamification mechanics accordingly. Based on this literature overview, we propose design guidelines researchers can use to implement gameful design in their healthcare informatics projects.