Measured wellness — an expansion of the medical history and physical exam
Inasmuch as person’s state of disease is assessed through the physical examination — vital signs, clinical signs, imaging, laboratory tests, etc — a person’s state of wellness can be measured through assessment of positive and negative functioning (also called eudaimonic well-being [1]) in the 8 dimensions of wellness. The medical history and physical exam (H&P) addresses many of the dimensions of wellness. The medical H&P emphasizes physical wellness, but certain sections — the social history, psychiatric history in the review of systems, and work history in the history of present illness — address social, emotional and vocational wellness, respectively. Measured whole-person wellness expands the medical H&P to provide systems-level (vs. molecular) data needed for precision medicine [2].
How we measure wellness
To measure wellness, we begin by classifying all wellness events according to the International Classification of Wellness (ICW-1) taxonomy (http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/ICW). Events are represented by cards. Wellness icons on the cards indicate the wellness dimensions associated with an event.
Users register for events.
After the event concludes we ask a simple question, “Did you participate?” If your answer is “yes” you get wellness points in the dimensions associated with the event. Your personal wellness score is your accumulated points in each of the 8 dimensions of wellness.
In Wellzesta Life, users set monthly goals in each of the 8 dimensions of wellness, and follow their progress towards those goals.
References
[1] Ryan RM, Deci EL. On happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual review of psychology. 2001;52:141–66.
[2] Council NR. Toward precision medicine: building a knowledge network for biomedical research and a new taxonomy of disease: National Academies Press; 2011.
