Designing a web-based behavior motivation tool for healthcare compliance

As one of the causes of increasing population with chronic diseases, low compliance with healthy lifestyle has been a major challenge in the healthcare industry. Not seeing immediate positive outcomes, many people became frustrated and stopped adhering to health plans that offer long-term benefits. Studies have suggested that peer supports are effective to improve compliance, and social cognitive theories have indicated that personal realization and confidence enhanced through entertaining gaming elements could encourage behavior change. In this study, we propose a web-based behavior motivation tool to help improve patients' health compliance based on previous work and theories. Key components in our service design are illustrated through a case study, including a social gaming and learning portal, an engineering approach to support different application scenarios, and information interventions based on predefined rules to achieve effective compliance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.