Gamified digital therapy for reducing perioperative anxiety in children: Exploring multi-sensory interactive experience

Abstract

Children often experience high levels of anxiety during the perioperative period, resulting in affecting the treatment outcome. Gamified digital therapy has been as a promising approach, however, many popular tools have not been designed for accurately meet the needs of children. This study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative user research to clarify the relationship between children’s requirements, multisensory design elements (visual, audio, tactile), and intervention measure, and proposes the game’s intervention mechanics. Based on it, we propose a gamified interventions system based on multisensory interactive experiences intervenes for children. Lastly, prototype implementation and randomized controlled experiments were assessed the usability and validity of proposed system. The result showed that 30 children scheduled for treatment a were randomly divided into either the control or gamification group. According to EEG results (0.67 vs. 0.70; 0.69 vs. 0.42; 0.67 vs. 0.38), children using the system showed significantly lower about reducing 42 % levels of anxiety, compared to children who received regular medical treatment (without gamified intervention). Meanwhile, parent satisfaction (M = 4.27); m-YPAS anxiety scale in gamification group (Cohen’s = 2.809). We confirmed that the system can be considered a new and effective tool for reducing children’s anxiety in perioperative period.