Developing gamified health&wellbeing applications with startups Games@vitalis.nu 10.4.2014 Jan Storgårds, DSc. jan.storgards@cursor.fi Head of ICT/Games Cluster Programme Cursor Oy, Kotka-Hamina Regional Development Company
Changing landscape of innovation creation This isn t your parent s healthcare IT movement. (Rock Health) VALIDATION plus FUNDING plus DISTRIBUTION = SCALE
Healthcare innovation - APIs available publicly available data - Quantified self, sensors, big data - Emphasize on selfcare - Focused business proposition - scalability - Funding (understanding innovation systems) - Growing Games for Health movement - Technology transfer process from research to applied research and commercialisation - Recognizable real need vs. radical innovation - Microsize startups (less that 10 people)
Gamification an opportunity #1 User motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic), immersion, engagement, empowerment and control Taking care of our health and wellbeing #2 Using the design process of games to develop a positive impact on health Retention
Mass markets
Health&Wellbeing business network We developed and tested a model where startup growth entrepreneurship thinking + technology + private/public partners together join to assist entrepreneurs to develop new innovations - Idea development process - Startup acceleration - Gamification - Agile development - fail fast Startup - Prototypes&proof of concept entrepreneurship - References - Clusters+networking - Funding Need/ - Born global Private&public User - 500.000e budget Technology sector
Running school app Need/ User Need/ User Physiotherapy with Kinect Couple therapy Need/ User Professional network
Results - A minicluster of healthcare&wellbeing organisations working together - 15+ organisations, 8 startups - Regional hospital Carea provides piloting opportunities - National health IT system developer Medi-IT provides a distribution channel for startups - Regional university provides talent - Games for Health movement Game design embedded to design of healthcare apps
- Respect the users game genre preferences! Learnings so far - Public sector can be a platform for innovation creation, however, it has been difficult to engage public sector to the projcts - Small teams have a significant innovation potential: let startups to develop their ideas in an agile way with relevant stakeholders; find them the skills and feedback they need to scale up their business - Let startups innovate without being caught in structures. - Think scalability all the time (not only projects) - Better have an offensive strategy than defensive one (play a game you might win! Fail fast philosophy) - Use always a good game designer rather trying develop the gameplay yourself avoid compromising the user experience and flow - No need to compromize between gameplay and usefulness
Next steps - From a Cluster towards a Community where all necessary stakeholders of the value chain work together - Applying best practices from Cambridge Medtech community - Issues: too academic approach in Games for Health - low level of commersialisation - Boredom effect&retention - Free-to-play model applied to health gaming - Monetisation models
Thank you! Developing gamified health&wellbeing applications with startups "We don t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." George Bernard Shaw (playwright, co-founder of the London School of Economics) Jan Storgårds, DSc. jan.storgards@cursor.fi Head of ICT/Games Cluster Programme Cursor Oy, Kotka-Hamina Regional Development Company
Projects 1) Physiotherapy with Kinect Serious Games Finland & Carea 2) Telecare in adult psychotherapy Suomen Terveydenhuolto.com & Pyhtää municipality 3) SoEasy easy to use interface for elderly people Premia Solutions Oy & Carea 4) Relationship game - Olento Games & experts 5) Mobile break exercise game - TripleBit with Cursor
Games for Health Finland - movement - New industries are created in the cross sections of the old ones - Intrinsic motivation is used to gain extrinsic objectives - Finland: Game industry + healthcare ICT - Learn from others: Cambridge medtech cluster