Fitness, Longevity, Preventive Healthcare & Wearable Tech.

Health perception in India, the rise of mobile wellness apps, and how the GOQii platform can be leveraged to provide the complete healthcare experience.

Disease in the 21st Century

Humans are susceptible to a variety of diseases. This is common knowledge: research institutions, government-funded programs, nonprofit initiatives and multi-billion dollar industries are founded on the hallmark of human existence that is sickness and disease. The inherent complexity of our genetic makeup opens up several avenues through which we might acquire disease: environmental factors, disease agents, genetic predisposition, and lifestyle choices. Thus, the genetic, biological, and cognitive complexity that affords us a quality, intricacy and longevity of life unlike any other species can be double-edged.

While disease acquisition is imminent, unpredictable and uncontrollable, the probability of contracting a disease can be reduced significantly by managing risk-factors. Risk-factors that can increase the likelihood of illness include 1) compromising environmental factors, 2) the presence of disease agents, 3) genetic predispositions, and 4) lifestyle choices that chronically influence health.

1. Environmental Factors: Over time, evolutionary adaptation has played a role in shaping human behaviour to be self-preserving, self-protecting, and less risky, to decrease the likelihood of contracting disease as a result of environmental exposure; it has nudged the human race into seeking safety and refuge from dangerous climates, harmful physical conditions and other hazardous environments.
2. Disease Agents: Evolution has also armed humans with instinctual habits to limit proximity to disease agents: the human disgust-reaction, or reflex, is an evolutionary mechanism to keep humans away from potentially infectious, disease-carrying agents, such as insects, metabolic waste, and bodily fluids. Increased disgust at potentially harmful agents reduces the probability of exposure to disease, thus increasing chances of survival.

Given that humans live reasonably safely, equipped with instincts and reflexes, how can a human, at the individual level, influence, augment or enrich their health, so as to increase their chances of survival? In the last 40 years, scientific and technological development has allowed scientists to begin research into mapping the human genome. Doing so would allow the identification of potential disabilities and prevention of hereditary diseases at the level of the individual. However, the extent to which humans can affordably, conveniently and feasibly map, customise and augment their genetic makeup today is, at best, limited. That leaves lifestyle choices — the only factor not dictated by evolution, not constrained by technological means; a single risk-factor at the behest of the individual, that allows one to influence, control, and alter the course of their own health and survival.

Yet, trends show that a primary cause of death over the last century is a result of poor physical or mental health caused by lifestyle choices. In India, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease are at an all-time high — stemming from high-sugar diets, poor eating habits, lack of exercise and inadequate nutrition. It is ironic that despite everything that the human race has achieved over millennia of evolution in order to ensure survival, it is lifestyle choices — the single factor controllable by the individual human — that continues to be a massive predictor of disease and sickness today.

Health Perception

And while people are passively aware of this trend, they are not actively motivated to take action. Most people, until faced with an imminent sickness, disease or symptom, are not motivated to consult a professional about their health and well-being. The India Fit 2019 report by GOQii revealed that a staggering 69.3% of individuals believed that they were not completely healthy, and that there was scope to improve their health; 79% of them believed becoming healthy would require lifestyle changes — not intermittent, faddish swings between healthy and unhealthy living, but a permanent, achievable solution to ensure a sustained healthy state. Survey respondents were also more inclined to believe that a modification of their current lifestyle would be far more viable, sustainable and effective than an ambitious, long-term health-and-fitness regime.

79% believed becoming healthy would require sustainable, permanent lifestyle changes — not faddish swings between healthy and unhealthy living.

Mobile Fitness and Wellness Apps

The scientific literature surrounding digital health and fitness platforms suggests that mobile apps can be highly instrumental in redesigning the lifestyle of an individual through conditioning, gamification and habit-forming techniques. A report by JMIR, a digital health publication, concluded that while health apps often fail to integrate important elements of behavioral theory, they “represent a very promising, burgeoning market and landscape in which to disseminate health behavior change interventions”. Research indicates that gamification techniques and highly engaging mobile interfaces can be instrumental in motivating adolescents and young-adults to catalogue, analyse and monitor health, preventing chronic disease and preventing future healthcare costs.

The GOQii Platform

And that’s where GOQii comes in. In a nutshell, GOQii uses a wearable fitness tracker and a mobile-app to monitor individual health, fitness and nutrition data, and provides access to health coaches and doctors to provide feedback, assistance, and motivation. The goal? To introduce accountability into the journey of lifestyle-change. The larger goal? To use short-term goals, incentives and easy-to-incorporate lifestyle changes to improve the quality of life of a user. The ultimate goal? To promote longevity and increase the life-expectancy of the average Indian.

GOQii is designed around the needs of the consumer: building on iterative data from users, fitness influencers, doctors, surveys and reports, GOQii provides 1) information, 2) incentives, 3) coaching, and 4) community in a single, integrated service.

The GOQii Ecosystem

Core Functionality

There are 3 steps involved in setting up the complete, end-to-end health ecosystem: selecting goals, connecting a fitness tracker, and choosing a subscription model.

• Setting goals: Upon downloading the app, the user is asked to select goals (eg: weight loss), and is provided with corresponding targets (eg: eat a lighter dinner today).
• Fitness Tracker: A user may choose to connect a fitness tracker to ensure information collected is continuous and accurate. They may choose to purchase a specialised GOQii Tracker, or connect their current personal fitness tracker (eg: FitBit, MiTracker).
• Subscription Model: Buying the GOQii Tracker comes with a 3-month subscription to a personalised health-coach, access to a doctor for health concerns, live-streamed health and fitness sessions, and other premium features. The subscription can be bought separately if a tracker is not purchased.

A GOQii FitnessTracker

1. Information

The app provides the information required to help the user achieve their goals, and provides additional resources to allow the user to explore health-related topics.

• Targets: the app provides daily health and fitness targets based on the goals the user wants to achieve.
• Articles: about nutritional tips, physical, mental and sexual health and wellness, understanding medical reports, and an array of other topics are available in the ‘Healthy Reads’ section.
• Videos: from professional trainers, coaches and doctors giving educational talks on niche, specialised topics are sorted category-wise, available for viewing anytime.

2. Incentives

The app provides accessibility to recommended food items and other fitness products. It also includes integrated incentives, such as insurance discounts, cash discounts and donations to charities, to reward positive user-behaviour, using conditioning to gradually transition users onto healthier habits.

• Store: Affiliated with a range of vendors across the country, the in-app GOQii store sells a wide-range of health foods and fitness products. Products are affordable, with the bulk of items priced between ₹100 and ₹400 ($1.5 - $5), and delivery is free.
• Rewards: Completing health and fitness goals and interacting with the platform earns a user GOQii Cash, which provides discounts across items in the GOQii store. Meeting daily goals also earns you Karma points, which can be converted into monetary donations to select charities and nonprofits.
• Health insurance discounts: A consistent and regular track record of meeting health goals can lead to discounts and premiums on health insurance.
• GOQii Mega-Challenges: In the past, GOQii has launched nationwide challenges aimed at making the average Indian healthier and more active. In response to a Stanford report labelling India the ‘Laziest Country’ for the lowest national average step-count, GOQii launched a 100-day India Steps Challenge, challenging users to increase their daily step-count. With over 2 million participants, GOQii measured an astounding 118% increase, boosting the daily average step-count from 4297 to 9391 steps.

3. Coaching

The presence of a steady mentor provides and accountability, discipline, motivation to the lifestyle transition, along with guidance for the best practices.

• Personalised Health Coaches: are paired with users, and craft a personalised health regime to help users meet daily goals. The health coach is always reachable via live chat, constantly monitors health-behaviour, and schedules a phone call twice a month to check-in on the user.
• Experts and Doctors: are reachable via phone-call for more serious health concerns and consultations.
• Live Health Coaching: Classes and informational sessions by health coaches, trainers and doctors are live-streamed throughout the day at pre-scheduled times.

4. Community

The application provides users to interact with friends, and other users with similar health and fitness goals, to foster a community of support, positivity and encouragement.

• Challenge other users: Allows users to find friends, connect with other users based on similar interests, create challenges and form group chats.
• Leaderboard: allows you to add family members to your plan, and creates a family leaderboard to promote fitness within families.
• Interactive Content: allows users to leave comments and react to videos and articles.

Lifestyle change isn’t easy. Adding health foods, subtracting bad habits, dividing time between health and fitness — does GOQii’s value proposition actually work? Science says it should — paid health applications have been shown, in various cases, to have a substantial effect on physical activity levels and the dietary behaviour of users.

Scientists estimate that advances in healthcare, technology, genetics and AI will make humans effectively immortal by 2050 — significantly reduced worrying for the human race about disease-carrying agents, compromising environmental conditions, or eating a heavy, salty, oily meal just before bedtime. But until then, using an all-encompassing mobile-wellness app — designed using psychological behaviour-theories, certified positive-reward systems, and gamified conditioning systems, while providing accessibility, convenience, motivation and advice, and being affordable — seems to be the way to go.

Stay up to date with the latest health and fitness trends! Download the GOQii App here: bit.ly/goqii_app