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Feasibility, acceptability and educational signal of a congress-based gamified challenge in Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: a cross-sectional telemetry and survey study

This cross-sectional study demonstrates that a brief, congress-based gamified challenge in Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases was feasible and well-accepted, successfully attracting new users to the ToREIMC platform while generating objective performance metrics and positive educational signals regarding knowledge gaps and motivation.

Original authors: Andrés Blanco-Di Matteo, María Riesgo-Magaña, Marta Martín-García, José Baeza-Ros, Andrea Castellano-Verdasco, María Martínez-Fernández, Diego Gayoso-Cantero, Alberto Vázquez-Blanquillo, Miguel Morant

Published 2026-07-03

📖 4 min read☕ Coffee break read

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Andrés Blanco-Di Matteo, María Riesgo-Magaña, Marta Martín-García, José Baeza-Ros, Andrea Castellano-Verdasco, María Martínez-Fernández, Diego Gayoso-Cantero, Alberto Vázquez-Blanquillo, Miguel Morante-Ruiz

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine a massive medical conference as a giant, bustling train station. Usually, doctors and scientists just sit in waiting rooms (lecture halls) listening to announcements. But in this study, the researchers set up a gamified "speed challenge" booth right in the middle of the station, using a mobile app called ToREIMC.

Here is what happened, explained simply:

The Setup: A Medical Trivia Sprint

The researchers created a quick, competitive game for doctors specializing in infectious diseases and microbiology.

The Game: Participants had to answer 10 tricky medical questions on their phones.
The Rules: It wasn't just about getting the right answer; it was about getting it right fast. Think of it like a "Speed Chess" match for medical knowledge. The faster you solved the puzzle, the higher your score.
The Goal: To see if doctors would actually stop their busy schedules to play, if they liked it, and if it actually tested their knowledge.

The Crowd: Who Played?

Out of 136 unique doctors who played (with some playing twice, totaling 144 attempts):

The Rush Hour: The most popular time was between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM. It was like the "lunch rush" at the station; people were taking a break and had a spare moment to play.
New Faces: More than half of the players (56%) had never used this app before. The game acted like a magnet, pulling in new people who didn't know the platform existed.
The Experts: The people who played the game habitually (like regulars at a coffee shop) got the highest scores, which makes sense—they knew the drill.

The Results: Did It Work?

The study looked at three things: Feasibility (could they do it?), Acceptability (did they like it?), and Educational Signal (did it show they were learning?).

It Was Doable: The app worked perfectly, and everyone who played filled out the survey. No one dropped out.
The Scores: The average doctor got about 6 out of 10 questions right. Only a tiny handful (5.6%) got a perfect score. This is good news! It means the questions were hard enough to be a real challenge, not too easy to be boring.
Speed vs. Smarts: The scoring system worked exactly as intended. The people who got the most points were the ones who were both accurate and fast.
What the Players Thought:
- The Good: Most players agreed that games like this help them learn, that the questions help them spot what they don't know, and that the competition makes them want to try harder.
- The Worry: Interestingly, 71.5% of players also agreed that gamification might make complex medical topics seem too simple or "trivial." They felt a tension between "it's fun" and "this is serious science."

The "Educational Signal"

The researchers used a specific term: "Educational Signal."
Think of this like a smoke detector. The study didn't prove that the doctors learned a new skill and remembered it next month (that would be a fire). Instead, the study proved that the "smoke detector" went off:

The doctors were engaged.
They were actively retrieving knowledge from their brains.
They realized where their knowledge gaps were.
They felt motivated.

This is a "signal" that the method could work for learning, even though this specific study didn't test if they remembered the answers a week later.

The Bottom Line

The study concluded that turning a medical conference into a quick, competitive trivia sprint was a success.

It was feasible (it worked technically).
It was popular (people liked it and played).
It attracted new users to the app.
It showed that doctors are willing to use games to test their knowledge, as long as the questions are serious and rigorous enough not to feel like a childish game.

The authors warn that while the "fun" part works, future studies need to check if this actually leads to long-term learning, not just a fun afternoon at the conference.

Technical Summary: Feasibility, Acceptability, and Educational Signal of a Congress-Based Gamified Challenge

Problem Statement
Gamification is increasingly utilized in health professions education to transform learning into interactive, goal-oriented experiences. However, evidence regarding its implementation in real-world professional settings, specifically medical congresses, remains limited. While conferences are high-density educational environments, many activities remain passive and lack objective evaluation via telemetry. Furthermore, there is a tension in the literature: while gamified questions can promote engagement and recall, there is a concern that they may oversimplify complex clinical decisions if not rigorously designed. The study addresses the need to evaluate the feasibility, engagement, and "educational signal" of a gamified intervention within a live medical congress context, specifically for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (CMID).

Methodology
The researchers conducted a cross-sectional telemetry and survey study during the National Congress of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC) held from May 27–29, 2026.

Intervention: A brief, competitive challenge using the ToREIMC mobile platform. Participants answered 10 clinical or microbiological questions (randomly selected from a pool of 30: 4 easy, 3 moderate, 3 hard).
Scoring Mechanism: A time-weighted scoring system where the final score reflected both the number of correct answers and response speed, designed to encourage rapid clinical reasoning and reduce ties.
Data Collection:
- Telemetry: Extracted from the app, including participation timestamps, correct answer counts, final scores, and total response times.
- Survey: A post-activity questionnaire using a 5-point Likert scale to assess perceptions on learning improvement, knowledge gap identification, motivation, and the risk of trivializing content.
Participants: 144 participations from 136 unique users (voluntary convenience sample).
Analysis: Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlations (for performance metrics), and internal consistency estimates (Cronbach's alpha) for survey domains. No control group or pre-post testing was employed.

Key Results

Feasibility and Engagement: The activity was highly feasible, with complete data capture. Participation peaked between 13:00 and 14:00 (37.5% of total participations), coinciding with a scheduled congress break.
User Acquisition: The challenge successfully attracted new users. 55.9% of unique users were potential new ToREIMC users (either unaware of the platform or having never used it).
Performance Metrics:
- Accuracy: Mean accuracy was 5.95/10 correct answers (Median: 6/10). Only 5.6% achieved a perfect score, indicating the questions were sufficiently challenging without a ceiling effect.
- Speed: Median total response time was 132 seconds (~13.2 seconds/question).
- Correlations: Final score strongly correlated with the number of correct answers ( $\rho=0.976$ ) and inversely with response time ( $\rho=-0.506$ ).
- Experience Effect: Habitual ToREIMC users demonstrated higher mean accuracy (7.05/10) compared to those unfamiliar with the platform (5.45/10).
Perceptions (Survey):
- Positive: 80.6% agreed gamification improves learning; 86.1% felt trivia questions help identify knowledge gaps; 81.3% felt competition increases motivation.
- Critical Tension: 71.5% agreed that gamification may trivialize complex clinical content, highlighting a nuanced user perspective.
- Reliability: Internal consistency was good for educational acceptance items ( $\alpha=0.81$ ) and self-efficacy items ( $\alpha=0.87$ ).

Key Contributions

Real-World Validation: The study provides evidence that gamified challenges are feasible and highly accepted in the fragmented, high-density environment of a medical congress, moving beyond controlled classroom settings.
Dual Utility: The intervention served a dual purpose: an educational assessment tool and a recruitment mechanism, successfully engaging a majority of participants who were new to the specific platform.
Educational Signal: The study operationalized an "educational signal" by demonstrating that the intervention generates objective performance metrics (accuracy, speed) and facilitates self-perceived identification of knowledge gaps, even without long-term retention data.
Nuanced Acceptance: The research captures a critical tension in the field: while participants value the motivational and diagnostic aspects of gamification, they simultaneously recognize the risk of oversimplification, suggesting that educational value depends on rigorous case design and feedback.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that a brief, congress-based gamified challenge in CMID is a viable educational strategy that generates objective data and high engagement. The authors position their findings as a "promising, early educational signal" rather than proof of sustained learning outcomes.

The study concludes that while the intervention successfully motivated participants and facilitated knowledge retrieval, it does not demonstrate sustained knowledge acquisition, behavioral change, or patient-level outcomes due to the lack of a pre-post design or longitudinal follow-up. The authors emphasize that for gamification to be educationally valuable in complex fields like CMID, it must be anchored in rigorous clinical cases and explanatory feedback to mitigate the perceived risk of trivialization. Future work is recommended to include comparator groups and longitudinal testing to determine if this model translates into sustained learning gains.