02.25.2013, by Christian
http://www.newlyswissed.com/staying-on-top-of-your-health-with-dacadoo/
Staying On Top of your Health with dacadoo
It is hard to open a paper or new website without being bombarded by news of the ails of many of the world’s leading economies. Most economists would agree that the costs of healthcare are amongst the highest. In order to maintain longevity and fiscal well-being, these costs are most in need of being addressed.
Fortunately, focusing on health has become a growing trend for these economies. This is partly due to media making people aware of health risks associated with poor diets and inactivity, among others.
with a team of specialists, Ohnemus set about to create a platform that accurately depicts the user’s state of health.
How dacadoo Works
The platform works on many Interestingly enough, techno- different levels to inspire its logy and social media have users to live healthier lives. also played a role. Welcome Upon registration, users supdacadoo!
Users can even add informa- also enabled FitBit devices to tion on their medical histo- track your daily steps (at least ry, blood pressure and pulse, 10‘000 being the goal). blood fats and blood sugar. This platform truly brings together most of your controllable health indicators. Another added bonus is that dacadoo works with a series of external measurement devices
A Real Time Health Tracker
dacadoo AppDacadoo is the name of the award winning health platform from Switzerland. The idea for dacadoo came from Peter Ohnemus who was concerned with the fact that there was no way of tracking people’s health in real time and seeing the growing rates of obesity all around the world. Ohnemus thought that the answer was an interactive and fun way to track and improve our wellbeing. Together
ply various pieces of health information to the platform which then starts to calculate a dacadoo Health Score of 1 1000. Not just a user’s physical activity and well-being are measured, but also their emotional and mental state (through a series of questionnaires).
like smartphones and GPS watches for tracking distances and speed during activities, the Withings Scale for your weight, and heart rate monitors. Realizing that exclusively using your smartphone for tracking your health is a large drain on the battery, they have
Using Gamification
Visually displaying your health as well as providing a score is a great way of gamifying our health. In a 2010 TEDx talk, Seth Priebatsch talks about how gamification is the next step in technology and how it can be used for the better. Of course, gamification does not mean that social media is gone. It, too, remains an integral part of dacadoo and will continue to be an important technology. Gamification works on us as we want to maintain a high score. The higher the score, the healthier you are — quite a simple motivator. The algorithm behind dacadoo makes it harder for users to keep a high score. This means that one cannot simply do a week of Seite 1