Playing for Wellness: A Review on Pioneering a Gamified Mobile Health Framework

There has been an increase in mobile health (m-Health) applications for physical activity, nutrition, health monitoring, and health knowledge in recent years. Besides, m-Health applications are identified based on their functionality, patient health status, and health domains. The new concept, such as gamified m-Health, is created specifically for health context purposes that implement game elements in the m-Health application. However, there is still a lack of understanding about how gamification should be applied in m-Health apps, leading to poor user experience while using the application. Therefore, this paper proposed a new gamified m-Health framework, namely the GMHealth framework, for gamifying mobile health applications. This paper discusses the frameworks and theoretical foundations, issues, and trends in the gamification frameworks related to m-Health applications. As a result, this new GMHealth framework can be a guideline in producing highly promising m-Health applications to reduce treatment adherence problems and boost user engagement with healthcare intervention.