Walgreens Starts Steps with Balance® Rewards

Walgreens has been rather savvy when it comes to mHealth. They have a great mobile app and website to help manage prescriptions as well as find answers to health questions. It was no surprise to me when I heard about their Steps with Balance Rewards program.

If you are familiar with Walk with Walgreens, Steps with Balance® Rewards replace that program. Basically, you get rewards for doing simple exercise and health “tasks” throughout the day. By walking, running, or tracking weight management, you earn points that can be redeemed for products and other rewards at Walgreens.

There are a few popular devices that can be associated with your Steps with Balance account — BodyMedia, FitBit, and Withings. This makes it easier to earn rewards and track your progress.

I’m not sure if this is something I’ll sign up for, just because I feel like I have so many other programs I’m involved in, but it seems cool. It sounds like a good way to track your progress toward certain goals, and earn rewards while you are at it. It has the typical features of a health tracking program – you can connect with others, set personalized goals, and see your progress. It looks like it has been pretty successful so far, as there have been close to 10 million miles logged and around 600 thousand users. So if you shop at Walgreens a lot, and you are wanting to be rewarded for living a healthy life, this may be the program for you!

If you want to sign up, it’s free! Just head over here and get started today (and yes, it’s free)

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May 3, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: Health Care  mHealth  Patient Home Monitoring  Social Networking Health
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Lose Weight and Win Money With DietBet

After I posted about the study that found financial incentives to be a good motivator for weight loss, I have been on the lookout for more websites popping up like Gym Pact. I was curious to see how much something like this would motivate me, and since I no longer belong to a gym, Gym Pact was out of the question. Well, today a friend of my sent me an invitation to a website called DietBet, and I was immediately intrigued.

DietBet is a 4-week program, where participants need to lose 4% of their body weight (or more) in order to get any of the “pot.” You can create your own challenge, or join someone else’s, and pay a certain sum of money to participate. For instance, the one I joined was $25. And let me tell you, I’m more motivated than ever before to lose weight, even just to get back my $25.

Whenever a new person enters your group, the pot rises. I was looking at the top game, and it’s at almost $9,000. I wouldn’t mind being part of that group! When the date arrives for the contest to begin, you have to take two photos  – one full length photo of you on a scale in “airport security” attire, and one of the scale, the number on it, and a piece of paper with a weigh-in word, to prove it’s actually you. I was wondering how they would do this, actually, and it seems like they’ve got it under control! These photos are kept private, and you don’t have to share your weight with the others in the competition.

During the competition, you can post photos, write comments, and just interact with others in the game. There is also an iPhone app companion for the game, which I thought was nice.  Starting on the last day of the competition, you have 48 hours to “weigh out”

I really believe that money is a great motivator for just about anything, and I’m interested to see if I actually have any success using this site. (PS, if you want to join in, my group starts on April 29th. The more the merrier!)

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April 19, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: Apple  Gadgets  Health Care  Health Games  iPhone  mHealth  Mobile Health Care  Patient Home Monitoring  Social Networking Health
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Text Messaging as a Tool for Behavior Change in Disease Prevention and Management

Recently I posted a few different pieces about technology being used to help people quit smoking, lose weight, and even manage their diabetes.  A new study is showing how valuable text messaging can be when it comes to managing your health.  It is by far the most expansive study I have read and makes a lot of interesting points and logical conclusions.

One of the biggest advantages to text messaging is that it is already widely used, and it is extremely inexpensive to use.  This low cost allows organizations without major financial backing to use text messaging as a tool for their patients.  There is no need create a new device or develop expensive software.  You simply use text messaging to distribute the desired messages to your patients.

The study specifically referenced studies that showed how text messaging was beneficial to people that were trying to quit smoking by holding them accountable for their actions.  The same principle applied to people that were trying to lose weight.  Taking responsibility for your actions is a huge part of both of these issues, and using text messaging allowed the affected people to accept that responsibility.

Text messaging can also be used to help manage diseases such as diabetes by sending out reminders to the patients.  There are so many aspects to properly managing diabetes that getting helpful reminders can only be a good thing.

While the study doesn’t compare text messaging to other technology that can be used for managing our health it does an excellent job of analyzing the benefits of this inexpensive and widely used technology.  The numbers that they present are quite staggering in some areas, and it is definitely worth a look at the complete study.

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April 29, 2011 I Written By

Filed Under: Health Care  Healthcare IT  mHealth  Mobile Health Care  Smart Phones
Tags:Diabetes Management  Heather Cole-Lewis  PubMed  Quit Smoking  Text Messaging  Trace Kershaw