A competitive game could help physicians and nurses bring patients’ blood pressure levels down faster, according to a study published in Circulation. The idea is to encourage medical professionals to do a better job of intensifying anti-hypertensive medication and avoid clinical inertia. But variations of this game from Qstream are also used to help reinforce ECG skills for residents, continuing education for physicians and to reinforce pharma sales staff knowledge.
Although the study’s results weren’t dramatic, it indicates that there are some benefits to competitive gaming for medical professionals and specifically how to reinforce long-term memory retention.
Here’s how it works. Information was emailed in the form of a question, with a correct answer and explanation provided immediately after a response is submitted. The questions were emailed and adaptively reinforced for a year, according to a statement on the study.
Researchers randomly assigned clinicians in eight Veterans Affairs medical centers in the Northeast to either the game or a traditional online posting with email reminders. About 48 clinicians completed the game and 47 read the online posting. They found that patients of clinicians playing the game lowered their blood pressure to their target level in 142 days compared to 148 days for those who read an online posting.
Players competed against other participants and could see their progress as they completed tasks.
The game was developed by Dr. B. Price Kerfoot, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. Clinicians can enroll in the spaced education game for free at Qstream. Harvard formed it in 2008 to develop and distribute the spaced education tool.
This approach to learning has focused on CME but QStream’s learning tools can be adopted for a wide variety of content. Pharmaceutical companies work with Qstream to reinforce the diverse drug knowledge their sales staff are expected to learn. Patient applications are also under development.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Alexander Turchin, director of informatics research in the Division of Endocrinology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and co-author of the study, said the study shows that an easy-to-use, low-cost tool can influence doctors and benefit patients. “Once you’ve designed the emails, you can send it to 10 people or to every single doctor in the United States without increasing your costs.”
The study is especially interesting because gaming applications for medical professionals haven’t been extensively studied and have tended to focus on medical school students and residents.
