Daily Management Review

Data Can Help You Make ‘Healthier Lifestyle Choices’


08/22/2017


The user of Earthmiles’ app will be rewarded to meet fitness activity.



The Chief Executive Officer of Earthmiles, shows us a new way to tackle “unhealthy habits” by tracking our “psychological” behaviour with data, whereby creating “something very powerful”.
 
Earthmiles is a British firm that has included “elements of the Quantified Self”, the latter if a “movement” that seeks to collect data on individuals’ aspects of daily life starting from their food intake to their “state of mind”, whereby informing “them more about their daily habits”.
 
Talking to CNBC, the Co-founder as well as the C.E.O of Earthmiles, Megha Prakash, informed:
“At the core of Earthmiles is a kind of psychological engine that helps you make healthier choices”.
 
Moreover, after undertaking every “mile of activity”, the users will get rewards from the app as “discounts and other offers”, whereby Megha Prakash also added:
“Financial rewards is just a part of it; it actually works on many different levels. For the consumer it's this fun, feel-good platform where, as you work out, earns earth miles the way you would earn air miles if you flew, and then with that you can earn rewards.”
 
This way after collecting data and processing the same, one can harvest information that would “help consumers” to make “healthier lifestyle choices”. In her words:
“This is actually combined with several quite powerful tools like the Quantified Self movement which, as you know, helps us become more aware of activities, and thereby improve information broken down into the form of smaller, healthier lifestyle choices; and underlying all of it, the behavioral psychological cues which are emotional, social, financial, (and) which ultimately results in positive behaviors.”
 
However, there lies a danger of data falling into “wrong hands”. It has been informed that Aetna, a “health care insurer”, secretly approached Apple for bringing “the latter's health and fitness-tracking technology to its consumers”. On the other hand, Aetna’s employees have been offered “Apple Watches” as trail purpose of “data storing capabilities”.
 
In fact, when asked about the danger of data getting into “wrong hands”, Prakash stressed:
“It's an extremely important question for consumers today, and actually with Earthmiles, we don't sell or share this data in any way, and it is used entirely for the benefit of users.”
 
Nevertheless, she also assured that:
“This is something very powerful but if, with their consent, can be shared and actually help them achieve insurance outcomes which are financially attractive then of course this is something that we could do”.
 
 
 
References:
www.cnbc.com