Tag Archives: BodyMedia

The #QuantifiedSelf and “Walking Interview”

June 6, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

If you haven’t heard, “sitting is the new smoking” in terms of health status.  And, unfortunately, you can’t just get up and exercise for an hour and then go sit all day.  That brief spurt of exercise doesn’t change the fact that we sit for 9+ hours a day.

If you think about our shift in work from a very manual work environment to a service and technology work environment, we’ve made activity during the day harder and harder to achieve.  Between e-mail and meetings, most of us are stagnant to accomplish our work.

That got me thinking about the #QuantifiedSelf movement and all of the activity trackers (e.g., FitBit, BodyMedia).  We know companies definitely look online to see people’s social media activity as part of the interview process.  Will they begin to ask about their activity data as a proxy for health?

On the flipside, perhaps the person interviewing should really be asking to see their potential boss’ activity data.  I’d be as interested in knowing what happens during the day.  It would provide a lot of insight into what happens in terms of meetings, face-t0-face activity, and be a good proxy for the real work experience.

Of course, the other option would be to introduce “walking interviews”.  People talk about walking meetings.  I’ve even done a running meeting going for a jog with a potential partner to discuss how we work together.  (It was the only time we could find to meet at a conference.)

Walking interviews would tell you a lot about someone’s health.  You could go up some stairs.  You could walk a few miles in an hour.

Since we know that health, happiness, and wealth are all correlated, this type of insight for the interviewer and interviewee seems very valuable.

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Books / Articles, Business Tools, exercise, Healthcare, Infographic, Social Media
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Interview With BodyMedia CEO at mHealth Summit #mhs12

December 10, 2012 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

BodyMedia 1

Last week at the mHealth Summit in DC, I had a chance to sit down and visit with Christine Robins who is the CEO of BodyMedia. (see bio below)  One of the most exciting things (mentioned at the end) is their new disposable solution coming out.

Christine Robins is currently the Chief Executive Officer of BodyMedia, Inc., a pioneering market leader in wearable body monitors. BodyMedia’s devices are unparalleled in the marketplace, and equip professionals and consumers with rich information to manage a range of health conditions impacted by lifestyle choices.

Prior to joining BodyMedia, Christine was the CEO of Philips Oral Healthcare where she led the global Sonicare® brand to significant sales and share growth. Christine also has extensive experience in a wide range of marketing and finance capacities gained during her 17 years at S.C. Johnson, where she ran notable brands such as Raid® insecticides, Glade® air fresheners, and Aveeno® skin care. With this background rooted in global multi-national companies and an entrepreneurial zeal essential to lead a high technology upstart, Chris is passionate about developing turnaround strategies, building teams, and driving innovation.

A noted speaker, Christine has delivered presentations at universities such as Harvard, Stanford and Duke, as well as keynotes at industry shows such as the Consumer Electronics Show, Health 2.0 and CTIA. She holds a degree in Marketing and Finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Marquette University.

If you’re not familiar with BodyMedia, it’s definitely a company to know from a Quantified Self perspective. They have been around since 1999 providing solutions and have 150 global studies about the effectiveness of their devices in weight loss (see one chart below). The devices that they use continue to get smaller and smaller with time and are registered with the FDA as Class II medical devices.

clinical charts_2012_updated

Their devices track 5,000 data points per minute using 4 different sensors. Here are a few screen shots from the mobile apps that they have.

bodymedia iOS 3

And, as you can see, they map well to the chart below which shows what data consumers and physicians want to track with weight, calories, physical activity, and sleep patterns.

Quantified Self 2

For food tracking, they work with MyFitnessPal which provides them with data on products you eat. I think a good example can be seen in this screen shot from the Android app.

bodymedia 4

But, honestly, a lot of what I was really intrigued by was a new offering they’re rolling out called the “PATCH” which will be a 7-day, disposable body monitoring system that does everything the full blown system does. I don’t know the price point yet, but this is really exciting as a way to pull new people into the market and to use as a strategy for setting a baseline with a patient to understand their data. It could then lead to recommendations around disease management.

Another thing that Christine talked about was they’re approach to partnering with places like the Biggest Loser and other to allow for a customized content approach to your messaging from the system. She also showed me how the device will project where you will end up at the end of the day based on your past history.

They also have a module for a coach or weight loss professional to help manage and view data across all the people they’re working with.

(And, I just grabbed this image from their website since it points out the 3 key things to weight loss.)

exercise, Healthcare, Innovation, Press, Research, Software, Technology, Value Propositions
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