The gamification of health – developers wanted

The You Company is dedicated to preventative healthcare and wellness. Wellness can be defined as follows: "Experts have long agreed that preventative healthcare is vitally important, yet is often underestimated or even overlooked. Wellness goes beyond preventative healthcare and is about being well and staying well i.e. optimising one’s health as well as avoiding illness.

The company has already launched a “Key to Life” product. This is a physical product with a sophisticated personal online support system that allows users to record and track biometric readings such as blood pressure, body mass index (BMI) and other essential health assessments recognised by the medical profession as being key to general health and wellbeing. Via an interpretative database (Pyro), Key To Life allows users to follow trends in their health, to be alerted to risk areas and to take control of their wellness.</p> <p>It is currently accessible as an online portal and is primarily distributed to employees as part of the HR practices of large corporates. For further information on TYC, please visit <a href=" home.htm?="home.htm?" www.theyoucompany.com="www.theyoucompany.com" http:="http:" />www.theyoucompany.com/home.htm

The problem with the existing Key to Life product is its inability to engage customers on a long-term basis, since it is based around users entering data via a PC purely for recording and tracking purposes. The You Company see an opportunity to improve customer attraction, retention, and monetisation via an engaging mobile application. This application must not be dependent upon the user already having “Key to Life”, but should encourage them to purchase it and make use of TYC’s services.

Overview

The You Company wants to build an iPhone application that will apply gameplay mechanics to the concept of improving awareness and building commitment to your personal health and wellness.

Health and wellness are complex issues which include exercise, fitness, diet, weight, social interactions and friendships. We want to build a journey for our users through awareness, intent and commitment to change their attitudes to health and wellness.

Specific objectives

Key To Life has seen partnerships from large businesses leading to good initial conversion, but has struggled with long-term engagement with end-users. A successful bid will address the following elements:

• Promotion of health and wellness: This is the over-riding ambition of the app – to encourage users to become more aware of health and wellness issues and ultimately to become fitter and healthier through interaction with our technology.

• Acquisition: Features and designs to draw users into the application and encourage them to invite their friends

• Retention: Wellness and health programmes are only effective if consumers stick with them. The successful bid will offer gameplay mechanics that highlight and reward long-term engagement with the application.

• Monetisation: This is a commercial project, and it must have a clear route to commercialisation. The company expects that the initial application will be free, with mechanisms of generating revenue from upsell or indirect routes such as advertising. We want the core application to be free, to drive users into the service and to offer upsell opportunities. One element is to upsell a full biometric kit (see below), but we would also like to be able to offer download only upgrades via in-app purchases.

Initially, retention is the most important objective.