Recently I posted about how wellness needs to be integrated into everyday life and how hard it is to achieve. The key is still creating incentives for healthy living as well as making it fun and entertaining.
A prototype cell phone unveiled last week in Japan gives us a glimpse of how the worlds of health, communication and entertainment might converge one day. Developed in partnership of NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi Electric Corp, a "Wellness Phone" is designed to monitor basic health indicators, like pulse, body fat, bad breath and stress level and alert the owner to act.
AP News story, "New Prototype Phone Gives Fitness Check", has the details and here I would just highlight the most interesting features:
The prototype Wellness mobile phone from Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc. targets users with busy lives who want a hassle-free way of keeping track of their health, according to company spokesman Noriaki Tobita.
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"It's with you wherever you go, like a portable personal trainer," he said.
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When the busy spokesman answered "Yes" to a series of questions - including "Do you feel lethargic?" and "Do you go to bed after midnight?" - a message appeared on the screen warning he was under a lot of stress.
"Don't worry, tomorrow's a fresh new day," the phone then flashed. "Keep your chin up!"
The keywords here are "users with busy lives", "hassle-free way" and "portable personal trainer". Health maintenance could take a lot of time out of our busy schedules and it is tempting to overlook with everyday demands. But programs and devices that do weave themselves into our daily lives indeed stand a chance of being adopted into our regular routine and making a difference.
This example should inspire a lot of further innovation in healthy lifestyle promotion.
