'Digital health' movement in focus at tech show

The Consumer Electronics Show is filled with new gadgets to monitor fitness, detect problems and find solutions to health issues ranging from obesity to diabetes to rare medical conditions.

One trend is “gamification,” which uses a model from the video game industry to offer points and rewards to boost health and reduce costs.

At CES, the world's biggest technology show, UnitedHealthcare unveiled a joint effort with Konami Digital Entertainment to reduce childhood obesity through a new dance game that challenges youngsters while monitoring things like body mass index and caloric burn rate.

The program “adds game mechanics and game psychology to make the experience more engaging and immersing,” said Arrianne Hoyland, game producer for the insurance giant.

Hoyland said the company has other programs such as using mobile apps to provide rewards to pregnant women to encourage prenatal visits. The women are given a gift certificate but if they receive the right care, “we can offset those costs and keep them healthier,” she said.

“It turns out gamification of health really works,” said James McQuivey, analyst at Forrester Research.

“People have a competitive urge, and this can bring new people into something. People want peer recognition, they want to outdo other people.”

James Fujimoto of the ANT+ Alliance, which includes some 350 firms that use low-power devices for fitness devices, including many wearable ones, said gamification has grown into a “very big initiative that is very popular for training.

Another gamification example comes from HealthyWage.com, which partners with firms to offer a weight loss challenge for a group with a reward of US$10,000.

“This past year alone, we've seen a surge in businesses, healthcare companies and school districts seeking to offer weight loss programs that will better engage and excite the staff and, ultimately, more successfully achieve health and overriding fiscal program goals,” HealthyWage CEO David Roddenberry said in a statement.

Other firms are finding ways to use mobile apps to improve health care.

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