ArticleBMC medical education2026
Design, development and preliminary usability evaluation of "PhysioMaster": adaptive gamified assessment tool for neurorehabilitation in undergraduate physiotherapy students.
Article in BMC medical education, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTraditional teaching methods in Neurorehabilitation often struggle to address diverse educational needs, which can lead to reduced student engagement. Gamification offers a promising strategy to enhance motivation and learning outcomes in medical education. This study aimed to design, develop, and perform a preliminary usability evaluation of "PhysioMaster," a gamified educational system tailored for the undergraduate course 'Physiotherapy in Neurological Patients.
methodsA qualitative, participatory study was conducted at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (2023-2024) involving physiotherapy experts and students. The development process followed five phases: exploratory review, needs analysis via focus group discussions, data integration, content development, and system development. Qualitative data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. The formative assessment utilized a Think-Aloud protocol involving seven final-year students to identify functional and design-related barriers through qualitative observation.
resultsPhysioMaster was developed as a Progressive Web App (PWA) featuring distinct educator and student panels. The system integrates clinical scenarios with gamification elements, including points, leaderboards, avatars, and an adaptive mastery-learning system that targets individual knowledge gaps. Initial testing revealed specific technical bugs and interface challenges-such as navigation difficulties and layout clutter-which were systematically resolved to ensure system stability.
conclusionsThis study demonstrates the successful development and initial feasibility of PhysioMaster as a gamified tool for neurorehabilitation education. While the findings confirmed high user acceptance, this formative phase prioritized functional potential over the direct measurement of learning outcomes. Further interventional research is required to rigorously assess the system's actual impact on educational effectiveness and clinical competency.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.