The extensive usage of Triumfland Saga game as a free public service in Estonia created a great opportunity for us to further understand user behaviour in the game and evaluate retention and engagement based on real-life data.

Regular updates to Triumf’s health game help boost user engagement and improve children’s experience in the game. Here we give an overview of new minigames and how they faciliatate deep knowledge consolidation.

Estonian health technology startup Triumf Health that has created a mobile game platform for pediatric patients launched an extension to the platform to relieve the effect of COVID-19 crisis on children.

Beyond the changes that can occur in disease management, all children are universally vulnerable to the mental burden of isolation, confusion, and worry about themselves or their close ones getting infected.

The aim to launch a mobile application Triumf for parents is to give them information about their child’s health and wellbeing and support their own self-efficacy.

Triumf intervention for ill children is delivered through a game environment to reach young patients in a safe, intuitive and engaging way. Our gamified digital health solution offers psychological and behavioural support to improve children's mental health and treatment engagement. Regular updates to Triumf game help boost user experience (UX) and optimal user engagement.

The Triumf health app has been improved with a new feature! We have added a new therapeutic Bubble mini-game that offers endless possibilities for relaxation and challenge. Although it is difficult to tell when playing with soap bubbles began, we know that blowing bubbles was already depicted in the 17th century. Taking into account how much fun blowing bubbles is, one could indeed assume that it must have started centuries ago.

The change in lifestyle and nutrition in the society has been incredibly rapid and cardinal. In only one generation the childhood obesity rates have tripled. Statistics from Finland indicate that every third boy and every fifth girl aged 11 is overweight, at the same time one in three is overweight in the US. Alarmingly, obesity rates continue to rise among children and adults even though there are numerous intervention strategies developed to relieve this problem. Still, obesity continues to be the biggest challenge of 21st century and if this is not successfully handled, average life expectancy will decrease and the rate of lifestyle-associated diseases will increase. These estimates strongly emphasize the need to prioritize obesity prevention and treatment in this generation, which in turn allows us to shift the focus on the prevention of diseases. Our game helps kids with weight issues to find the motivation to control their weight, it helps them understand themselves better and teaches healthy behaviors that are necessary for all kids to stay well and energetic.

We are glad to write about our new problem-solving missions and improved health-related tasks that take place in the Triumfland city on our digital health platform. Activity-based learning is an important pedagogical approach and we utilize this method in our Triumf health game where kids are getting new knowledge from the educational module and later on need to apply this information in different activities. This post describes how we have achieved this.

Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children. It causes swelling of the airways that in turn results in narrowing of the airways and difficulties in carrying air to the lungs. Allergens can trigger asthma symptoms that include trouble breathing, wheezing, coughing and tightness in the chest. Asthma management usually requires lifelong care, and like other chronic illnesses, asthma places a great mental burden on the patient. Our game helps kids with asthma cope better with their chronic condition, helps them understand themselves better and teaches healthy behaviors that are necessary for all kids to stay well and energetic.

Things are moving fast this year and we try to keep up - not only by providing more and better support for ill children through our Triumf health game but also by delivering more content. And now we are very proud to announce that the Coloring Book is part of our Triumf health game! Keep reading to learn more about the importance of mindfulness-based techniques in disease management and have a look at our wonderful Coloring Book!

The status updates and news that we have shared during the last 12 months of our journey have mainly been focused on the Triumf game for pediatric patients itself. And it's for a reason! Metaphorically speaking, since the culmination of last year's initial clinical trials, Triumf's hero has gotten prettier (see Leandro's blog post about the overhaul of game's design), wittier (see Kaari's post about new content) and even more social (see Kaari's posts about the mid-year recap).

We have recently added more paths to our Triumf health game, which is now available for following pediatric conditions: cancer, diabetes, asthma, overweight and surgery. After many months of hard work in improving the app to include more diseases, give better support and a more engaging experience, we finally also updated our visuals of the UI with a cute and toonish style that is better suited for our young audience. This blog post gives a visual overview of this major update.

Our health app is available for several conditions, including cancer, diabetes, asthma, weight problems and children undergoing surgery. Last year, we had a valuable chance to involve childhood cancer patients in the design of Triumf game. We were able to demonstrate promising results amongst these patients. This time, our goal was to understand how our solution was perceived by diabetic patients, too. As such, in May we met with four charming testers from Estonian Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ELDÜ). The youngest partner was 9 years old, the oldest 12 years and their time from diagnosis varied from 3 to 10 years. The aim of the meeting was to have a joint testing session (although some also had a chance to test at home) to explore around in the game and give feedback on the experience.

In order to help chronically ill children, we need to focus on many aspects. First and most importantly - their mental health - how they are coping, what are their strengths and difficulties. How we can support their strengths and help with their difficulties. But if they already have the disease then we need to monitor how their treatment is followed, we need to give information on their condition, their health and wellbeing, we need to support their general health behaviors so they could live healthier lives and at the same time empower and give a sense of success. These components that are necessary to induce behavioral change work only when these are delivered in a way that kids love. And don’t they enjoy playing games? In our mobile health game kids need to save the Triumfland city from the Disease Monster but how did we come up with that? How did we know about the needs of the users?

Triumf health app is now available for school-aged kids with various conditions with the aim to give them psychological as well as treatment related support and foster healthy lifestyle. Have a look at the pediatric disease paths that the game features.

Triumf mobile health game is now in the landscape mode and this post gives an overview of the benefits of making such change from the portrait mode. Of course both of those modes are useful in most cases but the decision to use either landscape of portrait mode depends on the game design and on the gameplay experience. We believe that having the game in the landscape mode significantly enhances the gameplay and here is why.

Digital health interventions such as the Triumf game have great potential as health improving scalable tools by contributing to the effectiveness, accessibility and personalisation of healthcare delivery. However, digital health interventions (as any other intervention) need to be evaluated using proper research methodology in order to prove effectiveness or at least safety.

Our blog has been rather quiet during the summer because our focus has fully been on patients and game development. As you might know, we are currently in the middle of clinical trials to scientifically evaluate the effect of Triumf mobile health game on mental wellbeing and health related quality of life. That’s amazing, don’t you think?

In the end of January we had another round of obtaining feedback on the game together with (former) pediatric cancer patients. Read on to see what we learned from this testing period.