Personalised Mobile Health and Fitness Apps

Lessons Learned

from myFitnessCompanion®

Peter Leijdekkers

Mobile Health Apps

• Monitoring Health & Fitness

• Prevention, Diagnosis and treatment

• Chronic disease patients

– Blood pressure, Weight, Asthma, Insulin

• 33% of 1.4 billion smartphone users uses a health app in 2015! (Global Health Market Report)

2014 Wearable Devices

myFitnessCompanion®

• Launched in February 2011

• Over 5000 users.

• 15 different languages

• Freemium model:

– Free (limited functionality)

– Monthly subscription ($3.99)

– Yearly subscription ($29.99)

myFitnessCompanion®

General well being

Chronic disease management

Rehabilitation

myFitnessCompanion®

• Developed for Android phones and tablets

• Monitoring of Weight, Blood Pressure, Insulin, Asthma, Cholesterol, Heart-rate, Bowel movement…

• Exercise monitoring using sensors

• Sensor or Manual input

• Upload to Microsoft HealthVault, Fitbit…

Trials

• Several trials are being conducted with myFitnessCompanion in USA and Europe.

• Example: Asthma trial in Norway

– Aim: better control of their life by improving their physical and psychical condition.

– a significant improvement of their overall health condition.

– Motivated to continue their activities related to physical training and use of smart phone applications.

Acceptance

• Maturity of Health & Fitness App market for Chronic disease management?

• Users willing to use and pay for mobile apps?

• What do they monitor and how?

What is being monitored?

• Chronic diseases

• Exercises getting popular

blood pressure, 40.0

Blood glucose, 23.3

Weight, 11.9

Exercise, 11.7

Oximeter, 4.8

Cardio, 4.9

Temperature, 3.1 Cholesterol, 0.4

Manual or Sensors?

• Support for 20+ different wireless sensors

• Mainly manual input. •

Sensors: – AND Blood pressure and weight scale most

popular. – Zephyr HxM heart rate monitor increasing.

• Why Manual? – Users use existing devices – Too expensive

Data: PHR or keep it local?

• Personal Health Record systems such as Microsoft HealthVault, Fitbit and proprietary systems.

• Microsoft HealthVault becoming increasingly popular.

• Many users just keep the data locally on the phone.

• Export of Blood pressure and Exercise results popular

Discussion • Strengths:

– Easy to use, Cheap

– Quality measurements

• Weakness:

– Mainly manual input. Allows for inaccurate data entry

– Self-motivation to monitor for longer period of time an issue.

– Many app available. Commercially viable? Reliability & faulty apps?

• Threats:

– FDA regulation stalling innovation?

– Security & privacy concerns

• Opportunities

– Market will exponentially grow

– Health professionals exploring the possibilities of mobile health apps. Finally adopted?

Thank You

myFitnessCompanion.com