Level Up Your Health: How Looped Rewards Patients for Better Care

Are video games good for you? That depends on who you ask. However, games are an undeniably popular part of our culture, and Looped founder Sam R. Patel aims to harness humanity's affinity for gaming to build a better understanding of health.

"Patients right now have a problem with getting information," says Patel. "They go to a clinic for treatment — let's say Botox or weight loss. And then they have a bunch of questions, like, 'Should I be preparing? Should I drink water? Should I not eat before? What should I wear to the treatment? Am I healing properly? What should I be doing? How should I go about my care? Should I see results right now?' There's all these questions or curiosities they have."

Patel notes that the issue isn't with the information itself — treatment providers can, for the most part, answer patients' questions. Instead, it's a problem with how information is disseminated. "What do we get when we go to a clinic?" he says. "We get a pamphlet of PDFs and papers. You know that no one reads that, and it goes into the garbage."

Rather than reviewing materials and asking healthcare providers for clarification if needed, patients often turn to social media. They might view videos posted by patients who have gone through similar procedures or ask questions in online forums.

While one can glean useful insights this way, it's also possible for patients to receive incorrect or misleading information.

This is a lose-lose proposition for patients and clinics. Patients become frustrated because they feel as though they get better information on social media, and clinicians become frustrated because patients are asking the internet for answers instead of their healthcare providers.

"Patients are failing, and clinics are failing," says Patel. "So, how do we tie this together?"

Enter Looped, the app that brings healthcare education into the 21st century.

Looped is a white-label product, so every participating clinic receives its own branded version. Each patient has a profile where they can watch social media-style videos related to upcoming treatments and any health and wellness topics that interest them.

The app's curated content is posted by healthcare experts from around the world. Interested patients can find videos on wellness, fat loss, dentistry, aesthetics, and just about any other specialty or area of focus imaginable.

"After they watch the videos, they get rewarded, and the rewards get them more treatments," Patel says. "Typically, you get rewards for spending money. Looped gives patients rewards for doing well in their own healthcare journeys."

Looped isn't intended as a one-off way for patients to prepare for a procedure. Instead, it's meant as a continuous guide through a patient's healthcare experience.

Patel outlines a hypothetical patient experience: "Imagine Erica is doing a body sculpting treatment. She just started in the clinic, so she downloads the app, and the provider uploads the treatment into the app," he says.

"Erica wants to know, 'What do I need to do before my first visit? I'm nervous. I don't know what to expect,'" Patel continues. "So Erica can go and watch videos on all the different treatments outlined per week. The first week might be on what to do before your visit; the second might be on what to do after your visit, and so on."

The app isn't meant to replace a patient's interaction with their provider—patients can still call, email, or otherwise reach out with questions as they normally would. It's simply meant to make understanding their health faster, more convenient, and more fun. The app experience is rewarding in itself, but the actual rewards allow patients to finance more treatments.

"The beauty of this is that we're basically gamifying patient care, and when you gamify patient care, people are excited about their own health," Patel says. "Engagement makes a happy patient, happy patients make compliant patients, compliant patients are healthy, and healthy patients love to come back and spend more money with you."

Looped is scheduled to launch in North America in early 2025, but for Patel, this is just the first step. He's looking to take the app to Europe in the future and eventually expand its use and influence worldwide.

Patient engagement is far from the only hurdle clinics or their patients face. However, by empowering patients to take an active, informed role in their care, Looped is already helping promote a better healthcare future, which couldn't come at a more critical time.