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Games for Health in the Home: Gaming and Older Adults in the Digital Age of Healthcare

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Handbook of Smart Homes, Health Care and Well-Being

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Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of current research on digital health games and health benefits derived from game play in the home setting by an older adult population. Initially, this chapter presents the current problems of an aging population and a series of gaming trends, game genres, and technology used by older adults are described. This chapter further ascertains previous works, primarily reviews (narrative and systematic), to establish the current stance of utilizing digital games for health among older adults and assesses quality-of-life benefits. Aggregated recommendations across all the reviewed studies are listed and a comprehensive standard digital health game classification system is proposed. Games for health taxonomy and respective technologies are described, in particular the nature of engagement by users. Finally, recommendations for future research on games for health in the home are provided.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine (NLM) Biomedical and Health Informatics Training Program at the University of Washington (Grant Nr. T15LM007442). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    Amanda K. Hall

  2. Institute of Movement and Sport Gerontology, German Sport University, Cologne, Germany

    Hannah R. Marston

Authors
  1. Amanda K. Hall
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  2. Hannah R. Marston
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Correspondence to Amanda K. Hall .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Joost van Hoof

  2. School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    George Demiris

  3. Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Eveline J.M. Wouters

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Hall, A.K., Marston, H.R. (2016). Games for Health in the Home: Gaming and Older Adults in the Digital Age of Healthcare. In: van Hoof, J., Demiris, G., Wouters, E. (eds) Handbook of Smart Homes, Health Care and Well-Being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01904-8_55-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01904-8_55-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-01904-8

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Games for Health in the Home: Gaming and Older Adults in the Digital Age of Healthcare
    Published:
    23 April 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01904-8_55-2

  2. Original

    Gaming and Older Adults in the Digital Age of Healthcare
    Published:
    27 August 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01904-8_55-1

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