Playing to Win Patient Engagement

Marketers are always looking for ways to boost patient engagement. With many audiences trained to block out traditional healthcare marketing messages it's time to turn up the creativity.

"Funware" also known as "gamification" is a marketing method that applies gaming techniques to non-game settings. Adding a little fun to healthcare through games or contests can boost patient engagement, brand loyalty, and employee satisfaction.

A few months ago, I wrote about how Children’s Hospital LA enlisted LA Lakers forward-center player Pau Gasol to promote its expansion. The idea originally started as a marketing campaign, but then transformed into an interactive video game, which uses images of Pau hiding in different spots of the hospital’s new wing. Patients can guess where Gasol is hiding and submit their scores when the game ends.

“We had a brainstorming session about it and at first it was going to be a campaign, but it turned into a game,” said Amanda Hedlund, marketing specialist for Children’s Hospital LA. "This way patients can interact and play with others while learning about the new wing of the hospital."

The idea at Children's Hospital LA was to boost patient engagement and familiarity with the new facility. The concept links adolescent interests such as video games and star athletes to the context of the hospital.

Though there was a base cost involved in creating the "Where's Pau Now" video game, the visit and participation from Gasol was voluntary. Since the game's launch on the Children's Hospital LA website, it has received 196 likes from Facebook. Staff also have received positive responses from patients, Hedlund added.

But children aren't the only demographic for hospital marketing games. Gaming techniques can also appeal to adult patients and even healthcare staff while keeping costs at a minimum.

The University of North Carolina Hospitals, a not-for-profit integrated healthcare system, is setting up a 2011 photography contest for employees. The two purposes of the annual photography contest are to promote photography as a hobby and beautify UNC Hospitals with quality artwork in public areas.

The top 10 photographs for each contest—one for the UC Memorial Hospital and one for the Hedrick Building -- will be enlarged, framed and displayed by Employee Recreation & Wellness at each building for 1-2 years. A judging panel will select the top 10 based on technical merit, artistic interpretation, and visual impact. After the top 10 are selected, UNC Hospital employees can vote for their favorites by submitting a nomination ballot.

The benefits for photography contest are two-fold--Free art and a means to increase employee engagement. UNC Hospitals could have hired artists to decorate the space, but this contest alternative combines cost-saving marketing with wall-worthy aesthetics. The idea is clever because it covers multiple goals of employee interaction.

The funware marketing technique can also encourage people to perform more tedious tasks that they would otherwise consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading websites.

 For example, to lure more patients to its website, Mills-Peninsula’s Family Birth Center in San Mateo, CA has posted a baby picture contest online. Moms are invited to enter a candid photo of their healthy, breastfed baby when they were age 18 months or less. Winners will be announced at their Children’s Halloween Party later in the fall.

The online contest draws the audience of moms back to the website not only to view the pictures of their children, but also receive information about the Family Birth Center.

Gaming techniques such as contests can play to our natural competitive drive.

Gabe Zichermann, CEO of the iPhone apps development firm beamME and a marketing author who coined the term gamification, compares the technique to the operations of a casino. A casino operator, for example, knows the yield of a slot machine to a high degree of certainty, he says.

A marketer placing a static billboard can't be as certain about what that ad will inspire consumers to do. "Where possible, I would, as a marketer, prefer to put a game in front of my users, because I'll get more predictability, more engagement, more time spent," Zichermann said.

"Games are a powerful mechanism for manipulating user behavior."

Gamification should be on the minds of marketers as a cost-saving way to include employees and patients in the activities of a facility. Online games have a competitive quality that can keep patients coming back for more. Contests can be as simple as posting rules and a sign-up sheet around the building and can payoff in employee engagement and patient education.

Marketers, it's time to play – you have nothing to lose.