Gamification in Clinical Trials: Survey and Literature Review Findings

24 published articles and two surveys of 1,044 US adults and 311 clinical trial sites inform this analysis of gamification in clinical research. The document synthesizes findings on applications in education, health outcomes, and patient engagement, along with perceived benefits and concerns. Author Christopher Hartford published this review under a CC-BY-4.0 license in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Identify primary application areas for gamification in clinical research based on the literature review categories of education, health outcomes, and patient engagement.
• Analyze patient and site preferences for gamified trial elements based on survey results describing familiarity with computer games and preferred application features.
• Assess key concerns about gamification implementation based on thematic analysis of patient comments regarding data privacy, software adaptability, and impacts on behavior.

Strengths

• Includes survey data from 1,044 US adults and 311 clinical trial sites, providing dual perspectives.
• Synthesizes findings from a targeted review of 24 published articles on gamification in clinical trials.
• Thematic analysis of open-ended survey comments identifies specific patient concerns like data privacy (26%) and software adaptability (22%).

Limitations

• The core data is a 670.7 KB DOCX file, which is a small document format not a structured dataset.
• Row and column structures are unknown, requiring manual extraction of any tabular information from the report.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality and structure require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Christopher Hartford.

Collection Method

Targeted literature review and two online surveys.

Time Range

Literature review covered articles ≤10 years old as of November 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-29 05:34:05.

Geography

Survey respondents were US adults and clinical trial sites.