Games patients play: Ayogo carves out a niche in the health-care space

Diabetics and others with chronic illnesses have a new tool in their self-care arsenal courtesy of Ayogo, a Vancouver-based software developer that creates games and applications to help patients manage their conditions and connect with others in their peer group.

Ayogo uses interactive social games to motivate patient activity, increase engagement and teach new skills, says Michael Fergusson, CEO and co-founder.

“The ability to play is a profoundly important capacity in the brain,” says Fergusson. “It’s how we learn and grow and explore our world. There’s no reason why doing something essential has to be dreary. Doing it in an accessible, fun way is an important consideration when you’re doing things that matter to people.”

With an extensive background in software development and gaming, Fergusson and his partner, Paul Prescod, developed a customizable platform – GoodLife – that leverages gamification components, incentives and social features that entice and motivate patients to take the necessary steps towards health benefits.

“My business partner and I wanted to do something meaningful, and we developed some experience in a previous work life with social networking and game play, and thought there was an opportunity to apply that to solve problems in health care,” says Fergusson.

Ayogo collaborates with clinicians, researchers, and health care professionals to develop custom applications for targeted populations. Most of its business has come from outside of Canada, says Fergusson, noting that tens of thousands of people have used Ayogo’s applications since the company started in 2008.

Working with the Diabetes Hands Foundation and the Joslin Diabetes Centre at Harvard, Ayogo developed Healthseeker, a Facebook game designed for people living with diabetes, which uses achievements, virtual prizes and gifting to create rewards for healthy behavior. This bridges the gap between intention and action, which is fundamental to health management, says Fergusson.

Since its launch in 2010, Healthseeker has become a viral phenomenon in the online diabetes community with approximately 7,500 players who have taken more than 30,000 healthy actions and eaten more than 16,000 healthy meals.

“We’ve also found that players who receive encouragement from their friends in the game have, on average, 2.5 times as many healthy actions as players who don’t—this is the power of social connections,” says Fergusson, who received the 2012 Ernst & Young Special Citation for Social Entrepreneur award for his work in this area.

Biometrics plays an important role in the game and apps, both as a feedback mechanism for players, and as a measure of the level of engagement for game developers, Fergusson says.

“Biometric feedback helps us to understand when and how we’re successful,” says Fergusson. “One of the interesting things we noticed is if you measure what someone is doing – say taking steps, for example – and then ask them how many steps they’ve taken, their answer is usually wrong. They say one thing, reality says another.”

Ayogo is currently working with BC’s Children’s Hospital in Vancouver in a program designed to help children struggling with obesity. The children are outfitted with accelerometers, which provide them with feedback on the activity they’re doing.  Biometric feedback is a critical component to the project because obese children don’t know how to exercise.

“They don’t know what peak heart rate is, but we can watch what they do and give them feedback on it.”