Design and rationale of the Engage-HF study: the impact of a gamified engagement toolkit on participation and engagement in a heart failure registry.

Abstract

Aims: Heart failure (HF) registries provide valuable insights into patient management and quality of care. However, healthcare professionals face challenges due to the administrative burden of participation in registries. This study aims to evaluate the impact of education through an engagement toolkit on HF nurse practitioners' participation rate and data completeness in a national registry: the Netherlands Heart Registration-Heart Failure (NHR-HF) registry.

Methods and results: Engage-HF is an observational study (intervention at the HF nurse level) with a pretest-posttest design within the participating hospitals. Between December 2022 and April 2024, 28 HF nurse practitioners from 12 hospitals will participate in a 24-week educational programme using the Engage-HF engagement toolkit. The main interaction platform in this toolkit is a gamified smartphone-based educational application called BrightBirds. The complete toolkit includes this educational application with weekly challenges, interactive posters, pop-ups, and alert messages, and a follow-up call at Week 4. The primary endpoints are the NHR-HF participation rates and data completeness at 1 and 6 months after using the toolkit. Additionally, we will analyse the experience of participants with the toolkit concerning their HF registry and knowledge of ESC 2021 HF guidelines.

Conclusion: The Engage-HF study is the first to explore the impact of education through a gamified engagement toolkit to boost participation rates in a HF registry (NHR-HF) and test participant knowledge of the ESC 2021 HF guidelines. This innovative approach addresses challenges in the rollout of healthcare registries and the implementation of guidelines by providing a contemporary support base and a time-efficient method for education.