Introduction: Online education games are gaining ground in health profession education, yet there is limited literature on its costs. This study is an economic evaluation of the substitution of a face-to-face (F2F) workshop with an online escape room game teaching the same content.
Methods: A traditional F2F workshop on hepatitis management was conducted with 364 students in 2021 and was compared with a virtual self-run escape room game called Hepatitiscape™, which was used by 417 students in 2022. The outcomes were final examination and objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) scores for hepatitis stations. An incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was used to compare costs and outcomes. Student perceptions of the delivery of Hepatitiscape™ were also captured using an online questionnaire.
Results: Delivering the hepatitis case workshop via Hepatitiscape™ yielded an additional 4.77% increase in the final examination score and a 21.04% increase in the OSCE score at an additional cost of AUD $4212 in the first year compared with F2F delivery. This equated to an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of AUD 883 per additional score of final examination and AUD 200 per additional score of OSCE for hepatitis stations. Hepatitiscape™ became cost saving from the second year onward. Student perception data revealed their recall of content was higher owing to the iterative design of the gaming elements.
Conclusions: Hepatitiscape™ is likely to be a cost-effective strategy to deliver workshops that are routinely delivered F2F to test knowledge-based constructs. In addition, virtual gaming has a logistical advantage over F2F delivery in that it enhances student participation from remote locations and allows for better control and flexibility of content delivery with increasing or decreasing cohort sizes, and can have potential long-term sustainable savings.
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