There are a lot of applications for gamification in healthcare settings. This is especially true with all of the influence of electronic health records in the U.S. in the past 10 years. With the emphasis shifting from EMR adoption to EMR optimization there will be ample opportunity to explore the role of gamification on outcomes. There is a journal "Games for Health" that has started to publish articles in the area. Here is a link of the latest issue. http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/g4h/5/1 All the best in your pursuit, I think it is a fertile research area.
Geoffrey makes a good point. I also think that the gamification of health is an important and growing area (although I slightly changed the focus towards gamifying work processes). However, the healthcare system is very static.
We made this observation when we created gamified exercises for fall prevention: at least in Germany it is extremely difficult to satisfy the formal demands for "treatments" to be eligible for coverage by the health insurances. I wonder if anyone here can provide examples of gamified solutions which have actually been accepted and are covered by the insurances..?
Conference Paper Modern principles of training in exergames for sedentary sen...
There also are experts who can be consulted. One of those is Debra Lieberman at the University of California Santa Barbara. See: http://www.healthgamesresearch.org/about-us/our-team/debra-lieberman
For a few years Dr. Lieberman was the director for a national program on gamification in health care that was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
It is not clear to me from your original question whether you have a particular interest in health care or field to which you want to apply gamification; but I suspect that experts such as Dr. Lieberman could help direct you if you do have such an interest.
We looked at using games as neuropsychological tests of older adults in an assisted living facility. The aim was to use games to provide frequent assessment of performance so that the facility could intervene sooner at signs of decline and provide more immediate care. The paper I give goes over one game, but you can follow the references to more papers on the larger study.
Article Assessing Executive Function Using a Computer Game: Computat...