Enhanced knowledge retention through MedScrab: an interactive mobile game

Noncompliance with medication regimens poses an immense challenge in the management of chronic diseases, often resulting in exacerbated health complications and recurrent hospital admissions. Addressing this gap, our team designed an innovative mobile game aimed at bolstering medication adherence and information retention within the general population. Employing Amazon Mechanical Turk, participants were enlisted and allocated into two cohorts: one engaged with our mobile game and the other perused an informational pamphlet about medication. Both cohorts underwent a pre-intervention quiz, followed by their respective interventions, and concluded with a post-intervention quiz. Primary outcome measures included the difference in quiz scores and the game play duration. The investigation encompassed 243 participants with homogenous baseline attributes. Participants interacting with the mobile game depicted a significant enhancement in their post-intervention scores compared to the pre-intervention scores. We observed a notable correlation of 0.346 (p<0.001) with a robust medium effect size of 0.641 (0.503 - 0.779). Although the duration of game play and post-intervention scores didn't exhibit a direct correlation, a tendency towards superior post-intervention scores was evident among participants who dedicated more time to the game. The interactive mobile game we developed exhibits potential as an engaging instrument for empowering patients and caregivers. Providing critical medication information and the potential side effects in a manner that increases retention would thereby mitigate medication noncompliance. Future research endeavors should focus on optimizing and broadening the application of such mobile interfaces to fortify public health initiatives.