Making Health Addictive

Today's post comes from Joseph C. Kvedar, MD, is the Founder and Director of the Center for Connected Health. He will be presenting at one of the Technologies to Watch Now sessions at the 2014 ePharma Summit. I first posed the question, “Could Mobile Health Become Addictive?” a few months ago. Since then I’ve done more thinking and I’m warming to the concept. To start with, addiction is a word laden with negative meaning. When we hear the word, we think of opiates, street drugs, cigarettes, or possibly gambling. In fact, Wikipedia defines addiction as, “the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences.” So, with that definition as backdrop, is there any way health can really be addictive? Probably not. What I’m really talking about is the juxtaposition of motivational health messaging with some other addictive behavior, specifically checking your smartphone. New evidence shows that people are in love with these devices, checking them more than 100 times per day! I’ve heard people are tapping in 110, even 150 times a day. Of course this varies, but let’s face it, we check our smartphones a lot and it’s hard to stop. A somewhat disturbing video makes the case well. It’s easy to build a case that smartphones are addictive. Recent research shows that checking your phone results in a small release of the neurochemical dopamine. Dopamine release has long been associated with ingestion of addictive substances such as heroin...
Source: ePharma Summit - Category: Medical Marketing and PR Tags: Health gaming SmartPhones and health education ePharma Summit Source Type: blogs