PERGAMON: A serious gaming and digital coaching platform supporting patients and healthcare professionals

This paper describes the design of a platform for serious gaming and digital coaching supporting healthcare and self-management of chronic patients. An instantiation of the platform outlined here supports self-management of adolescents with Type I diabetes that is integrated with their usual paediatric diabetes care. The platform integrates a sensor network (i.e., physical activity and blood glucose monitor), a gamification component and a virtual coach that functions as a coach as well as a game guide which provides hints and tailored feedback based on the patient’s sensor data, behavioural goals in the game world or in the real world. The application is available for registered patients on a website and as an Android app. The platform was developed over two years in a Horizon 2020 Industrial Leadership project. We discuss the planned user evaluation studies with adolescents diabetic Type I patients, the challenges faced in integrating pervasive serious gaming and digital coaching technology and implications for regular continuous care of patients with chronic conditions with this platfor