Yes, People Still Play Pokemon Go – Here’s Why Medtech Should Care

“People still play that game?”

This is by far the most frequently asked question when the subject of Pokémon Go comes up in front of non-players.

My husband and I have been playing the augmented reality game since it launched in July 2016 and became a worldwide cultural phenomenon practically overnight—breaking revenue records at $207 million in the first month.

I’m not the avid player I once was, but I still get a little dopamine boost when I catch a new “shiny” Pokémon or complete one of Professor Willow’s special research challenges.

It wasn’t until a recent conversation with colleagues that I fully realized Niantic, the developer behind Pokémon Go, has truly mastered audience engagement—something many industries, especially medtech, are still working to achieve.

In the past 30 days, Pokémon Go has had 90,378,910 active players. Even at 5:30 am U.S. Central Time today, there were more than 650,000 people logged into Pokémon Go, according to the live player count.

So yes, people still play that game. But beyond the numbers, the question for medtech professionals is: What can be learned from this massive, sustained engagement?

This is particularly important as we’ve witnessed numerous digital health and traditional medtech companies try, with mixed results, to embrace emerging technologies like augmented reality.

Earlier this year, for example, orthopedic surgeons at Mayo Clinic and St. Joseph’s Health Care London, in Canada, used Stryker’s Blueprint Mixed Reality (MR) Guidance System in shoulder arthroplasty surgeries. The Blueprint MR system combines Stryker’s software with Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 headset and allows surgeons to track the position and orientation of surgical instruments.

Despite examples like Stryker’s, many companies are grappling with the same questions: how can they drive sustained user engagement, and how can augmented reality achieve its full potential in medtech?

One company that came close was Akili Interactive, which had embraced gamification for ADHD. Once valued at $1 billion, the company was acquired this summer by Virtual Therapeutics for just $34 million after Akili had struggled with reimbursement challenges. Granted, Niantic hasn’t had to worry about reimbursement for any of the augmented reality games it has developed, but I can’t help but wonder if Akili’s story would have had a happier ending if it had engaged a partner like Niantic.

The AR gaming company does appear to be open to partnership opportunities. Specifically, Niantic is currently engaging its players and developers in an endeavor to create a new 3D map made for special experiences and anchoring digital content precisely within the physical world with its Niantic Visual Positioning System. I can think of countless ways medtech firms would benefit from adopting such a technology.

The lesson here is simple: engagement is everything. Medtech companies can’t afford to focus solely on technology—they need to think like Niantic, constantly adapting to maintain engagement and create meaningful interactions. By embracing strategies from industries outside their own, particularly gaming, they might just find themselves “catching” the next wave of innovation.