Coordination among European health sector,R&D community and game industry to promote clinical adoption of game based health application

One of the most promising use of serious gaming/gamification is within health care applications. Most of serious gaming research to date has been in other sectors as in flight simulators, oil&gas operations and in fire&rescue simulation for planning and training where European researchers have been at the forefront. In the case of medical applications, the use of gamification is found within simulation based training for health professionals and for game based treatment of patients with cognitive and/o r motoric impairments. We do find good examples of the use of gamification but few is documented in clinical trials. However, the European game industry have produced a string of successes in the past years and this competence represents a knowledge base for European researchers to leverage existing experience to coordinated action between European states in developing, testing and translation to full clinical trials and clinical adoption of game based health applications. We see that the collaboration b etween national clusters supported by this COST Action will represent an important non-competitive framework where European researchers - young researchers in particular - can collaborate and share ideas, results and network with European and internationa l gaming industry to overcome common challenges. This will bring gamification & health in position from the current limited use to substantially impact patient safety and autonomy as well as support the commissions ?e-health action plan 2012-2020? set ou t to improve efficiency of healthcare by 20%. Gamification and health will also impact the reconvalence time that will reduce the time for the patient to be off work or being supported by health professionals meeting the Europe 2020 Strategy?s objective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.