The Next Web » health

Google skips WebMD, starts showing you medical conditions that match your symptoms

Drew Olanoff — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:34:35 +0000

If you’ve ever had a really bad headache or back problem, you might have surfed over to WebMD to see if you can find possible medical issues related to your symptoms. Googling symptoms tends to return a bunch of Yahoo! Answer pages and some WebMD landing pages, so Google realized that it had to update its health-related searches and it has.

Today, the Google search team announced a change to how searches for symptoms would be displayed on its search engine. Here’s what they said about the update:

You might be trying to understand why you’ve had a headache every morning for a week or why your child has a tummy ache all of a sudden. Our data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition.

To make the process easier, now when you search for a symptom or set of symptoms, you’ll often see a list of possibly related health conditions that you can use to refine your search. The list is generated by our algorithms that analyze data from pages across the web and surface the health conditions that appear to be related to your search.

The example that Google gives is by searching for “abdominal pain on my right side” the results that you get will have a new view at the top showing conditions that match your symptoms:

While this isn’t stealing any pageviews away from sites like WebMD, Google is doing a little bit of its work for them. Instead of going directly to WebMD and searching for a symptom now, users might just start relying on Google as the first place to search. While the highlighted search results simply click through to a brand new search for those conditions, the change definitely keeps users on Google a little bit longer before they head off to another site.

In fact, WebMD recently launched a new feature on its site called “Symptom Checker“, which lets you save your symptom history. Even though Google shut down its health product last year, the company isn’t getting out the game completely.

I have to point this out: If you’re really sick, you should go right to your doctor instead of trying to use the web to self-diagnose.

In 2011: How Technology Shaped Health and Fitness

Courtney Boyd Myers — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:31:04 +0000

What is fitness? The first definition of fitness is: “health”. Health is defined as “the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor: good health; poor health.”

At The Next Web, we’re a mixed bunch. We’re avid runners, devoted yogis, health nuts, coffee addicts, smokers, drinkers and some of us just like to sit around blogging in our boxers– but we can all appreciate the deep shift going on right now in the world of health and fitness. From iPhone apps to cyborg visions, technology, alongside education, is helping to shape the future of humanity’s health. Check out a healthy selection of 2011′s best articles about health and fitness.

Insider

The Future of Fitness and Health

This is our seminal post on the future of health and fitness, which promises massive data aggregation, social elements and convenience. While it’s fascinating to track your weight, your height, BMI, running patterns and your caloric intake, future intelligence will rely on much more than that. It will know the history of your injuries, your genetics, your complete biometric data and not just about your activity today but also how external conditions play their part such as your geographic location, weather patterns, your social graph and what music you’re listening to. In the future, you’ll be able to correlate across all these different categories for a truly, holistic report on your health. We meet the companies taking us there. Read the full story here.

How a Geek Lost 35lbs and Got Fit with the iPhone

Throughout my days as a young geek-about-town I retained a rail thin physique due to the furnace that served me as a body. But, all good things must come to an end. In my early 20s I suddenly began to gain weight and the trend wasn’t helped by the fact that I was working largely sedentary jobs. This leads us to the topic at hand, how a geek stays fit after his body’s metabolism adjusts to life in its 30s and beyond. Read the full story here.

How mobile apps and gadgets will change your health

We have some very healthy people around here at TNW. Courtney Boyd Myers is a fan of bending herself into unnatural positions and calling it yoga, Zee appreciates traveling great distances on foot and ending up in the same place he started. Some call it running. Joel Falconer and I? We call it madness. For Joel and I, lacking the time, motivation and desire to “feel the burn” has turned us toward something more along the lines of “what’s next” instead of “what’s now”. For that, I’d like to offer some ideas about what we’ll see in the next couple of years as mobile technologies continue to pair with traditionally sedentary fields of practice such as healthcare. Read the full story here.

Entrepreneurs: 10 tips to maintain a healthy lifestyle

Whether it’s running, biking, swimming, yoga or just daily meditation, setting aside time for your health is so crucial to a balanced lifestyle. But when you feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day, how can an entrepreneur fit it all in? Read the full story here.

9 Inspiring Videos About Health and Fitness

We take an in-depth look on the future of fitness and the companies that are taking us there. We dug up 9 inspiring videos that range from hilarious to serious, from geeks to jocks, from the past to the present. Read the full story and watch the videos here.

A t-shirt that analyzes your sleep

There have been many apps, devices and contraptions designed to help you track your sleeping patterns throughout the night, but most require you to attach some kind of monitoring device, such as a wrist or head-band. Not any more – step forward the Somnus Sleep Shirt. The Sommus Sleep Shirt is a t-shirt – you wear it to bed in place of your normal bed garment. Except this t-shirt is embedded with thin, flexible respiration sensors that monitor and measure breathing as the wearer moves around in bed. Read the full story here.

When it comes to cancer, sharing can be the best medicine

Five years ago, you didn’t broadcast the fact that you had cancer. Some people can’t even say the word cancer out loud. It wasn’t what people wanted to hear, it wasn’t what you wanted to say, and it certainly wasn’t something you’d think would help your road to recovery if it were to affect you directly. But that’s no longer the case. Read the full story here.

Why joining a fitness social network can actually get you to the gym

We all love social networks, right? We’re practically addicted to them — as a matter of fact, if most of us would only spend as much time exercising as we browse social networks, our health problems would be gone. There’s a new social network in town called SixReps and it brings a whole new social networking aspect to fitness. Question is, would it make you move from your PC to the gym? Read the full story here.

This gym makes you pay more when you DON’T go

Gym-pact is the brain child of Yifan Zhang and Geoff Oberhofer, who thought of an effective way to motivate people to visit the gym regularly. According to Zhang, one of the problems is that most members see gym membership fees as money spent, or “a sunk cost, especially if you pay at the beginning of the year.’’ Read the full story here.

Fitocracy, the social network for fitness, joins 500 Startups and hits 75K users

Fitocracy is a New York City startup that’s building a gamified social network around fitness. We first wrote about Fitocracy in our recent report on The Future of Fitness, in which we interviewed founders Brian Wang and Richard Talens, who used to be “really out of shape, video game addicts”. Talens was “super fat” and Wang was “super skinny”. While in college, they realized they had to make a lifestyle change and thus became “addicted to fitness”. Inspired by their experience, the two started building a new platform that tracks workouts and turns personal fitness into a social game. Read the full story here.

Could this be the key to getting a workout at your desk?

A company named LifeBalance Station has combined the notion of a standing workstation with an elliptical machine, giving us the best of both worlds. The movable desk can go from a standing workstation to a sitting one and also pair that with what appears to be a rather comfy chair…that has an elliptical machine for the foot rests. Read the full story here.

Strohl Medical: Helping 800,000 people per year survive strokes

Strohl Medical is pushing boundaries that nobody has yet in bringing an EKG machine for stroke to the market. The EKG is a proven, trusted technology used in the detection and treatment of a heart attack for years, and yet no such equipment has ever been made for a stroke, leaving doctors and medical staff to what amounts in many cases to a guessing game. Read the full story here.

Keeping a Lifelog: The Definitive Guide

Keeping a lifelog is a commitment, and unless you find a method that really suits you, you’re bound to forget all about it very quickly. So why keep a lifelog? There are lots of reasons to start this practice. For one, it’s a great way to look back and see how you’ve spent your time, and preserve the moments that matter most to you. But it’s not just about nostalgia. You can also analyze how you spend your time, and see what changes you need to make to your lifestyle. Lifelogging has the potential to be a great self-improvement tool as long as you commit to it and track the daily progress in your work or private life. Read this awesome post here.

6 ways to remain healthy whilst working from your desk

In modern workplaces, the chances are you will perform your daily duties from behind a desk. Gone are the days of conversations by the water-cooler, that’s been replaced by email and instant messaging. In fact any task that required you to get up from your desk has likely been stopped in the interest of reducing the time spent away from your computer. Nothing beats getting up from your desk and stretching those legs, but if you have to spend an inordinate amount of time at a computer and need ways to stay healthy whilst doing so, we have you covered. Read our full story here.

Humanity Plus: How Transhumanism Could Change the Human Race

Transhumanism, as it’s known, is the process of augmenting ourselves with advanced technology; the point where the technology isn’t merely an extension of ourselves — like your smartphone probably is — but a part of ourselves. In shorthand, futurists refer to transhumanism as H+, or humanity plus. In just two characters they make the claim that technology can make us better than we are. Read the full story here.

Also check out a selection of our Nerd Fitness posts, a new series on The Next Web, in partnership with Steve Kamb.

News

RunKeeper’s Health Graph API is now open to the public

RunKeeper had its humble beginnings in Boston, Massachusetts as a simple running app nearly 3 years ago. Since then, it’s managed to attract a massive user base: 6 million fitness enthusiasts and counting on iOS, Android and Windows platforms. This summer, RunKeeper became a platform, not just an app, and began to built “The Health Graph” which is much like Facebook’s massive “Social Graph”. The Health Graph allows 3rd parties to build applications on top of a massive amount of correlated health data. In August, RunKeeper’s Health Graph API opened in public beta, meaning it is open to all developers and requests to access it are no longer needed. Read the full story here.

AOL’s Steve Case invests in health graph startup RunKeeper

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, RunKeeper announced a $10 million round led by Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet (invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Boxee), with participation from existing investor OATV (the venture arm of O’Reilly Media) and one particularly savvy, new investor: AOL’s co-founder and Chairman, Steve Case. This is in addition to its $1.1 million Series A round from last November. Read the full story here.

Google Health has six months to live, so now who’s going to disrupt healthcare?

Sad news reached us in June that Google is to close its Health service. While the company says that it simply failed to gain enough traction to be sustainable in the longterm, to me it doesn’t bode well for the future of healthcare. Google Health was designed to let individuals manage all their own healthcare information, set health targets, create custom trackers for things like amounts of sleep or caffeine intake, share health information with people who need it and potentially connect their profile information to devices and services via an API. In short, it was an open platform for health information and care, and it had the potential to revolutionize an entire industry. Read the full story here.

Gesture-based video technology arrives at your local gym

Read the full story here.

Researchers mine Twitter data to understand America’s health

Two computer scientists from John Hopkins University, Baltimore developed a special search filter to identify 1.5 million health-related tweets published between May 2009 and October 2010. The duo then analysed these tweets to find that Twitter is a useful source of information about public attitudes to health. Read the full story here.

Mark Zuckerberg announces he’s only eating meat he kills himself

In an interview with Fortune’s Pattie Sellers, Zuckerberg says from now on he’ll only be eating meat from animals he has killed himself. “I’m eating a lot healthier foods. And I’ve learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals,” he said. “It’s easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day.” Read the full story here.

Do you run, cycle or walk to work? There’s a new type of members club just for you

Founded by cyclist commuter Piers Slater, H2 is a club located in Soho, London with an awesome twist. Founded with commuters who run, cycle or walk to work, H2 Soho is the first club of its kind in the city, and the first of many to come. Read the full story here.

UK government to outline major ‘open data’ push for travel and healthcare

As part of Chancellor George Osborne’s Growth Review announcement today, the anticipated gloomy forecast for the UK economy will be juxtaposed against the government’s ‘world-leading commitments’ to open up public sector data. This will be with a view towards enhancing travel, healthcare and, ultimately, helping to drive economic growth and boost jobs in the UK. Read the full story here.

NHS patient data ends up on Facebook. But how serious is the latest data debacle?

In October, the NHS was facing one of its toughest challenges since the UK’s publicly-funded healthcare system was set up in 1948 – to stay public, or go private…that is the question. Those in favor of going private will be all over the latest data debacle to emerge, with a study showing that patients’ personal details are ending up on Facebook and other social networks. Indeed, the report found that confidentiality of NHS records is breached five times a week. Read the full story here.

Mobile health has huge potential in the Middle East, industry study says

The mobile industry is on the rise in the Middle East, and while the e-commerce sector is coming to life in the region, with countless group buying sites, online malls and flash sales sites, one area of concern that has been neglected is the mobile health industry. According to a report compiled at the UAE’s Mobile Show earlier this year, the one sector that respondents overwhelmingly believe that the mobile industry can have a positive effect on was the health sector – 93% of them believe that the mobile health industry can improve the quality and availability of healthcare in the Middle East. Read the full story here.

DrChrono is building a health care revolution on the iPad

DrChrono addresses the complexities and critical needs of today’s healthcare environment by providing a multi point solution, mobile health point-of-care apps plus access to our cloud web based Electronic Health Record platform. The company was founded in January 2009 and released its feature product- the DrChrono iPad app for doctors one week after Apple started selling the iPad. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, the famous programmer (inventor of Bayesian spam filters) has called DrChrono “the SAP for doctors.” Read the full story here.

Doctors using drchrono’s iPad app can now receive $44K from the government

In July, drchrono announced that its free iPad app had received official certification that will allow doctors to receive up to $44,000 in government assistance in exchange for using the app as an electronic medical records platform. This certification establishes drchrono as the first native EHR on the iPad to be certified for ‘Meaningful Use.’ Through the HITECH Act, the government allocated $19.2 billion dollars to help move U.S. doctors to electronic medical record systems. We also learned that 4 out of 5 Doctors plan to buy an iPad in the next year. Read the full story here.

An American robs a bank of $1, just for free health care in jail

This summer, James Verone robbed an RBC bank. He had no gun but handed the teller a note that said, “This is a bank robbery, please only give me one dollar.” Then he said, I’ll be sitting here on the chair waiting for the police. So, why did he do everything he could to get arrested? He says he did it for medical reasons. Verone has a growth on his chest, two ruptured discs and a problem with his left foot. At 59 years old, no job and a depleted bank account, he thought jail was the best place he could go for medical care and a roof over his head. Read the full story here.

UK mobile network 02 nets over £300k for Fitness First in location-based marketing campaign

O2, the second-biggest mobile phone network in the UK, has revealed that a mobile marketing campaign has helped net health chain Fitness First well over £300,000 in revenue. The campaign, known as ‘You are here’, uses geo-fencing technology, with mobile phone networks used to identify a user’s approximate position. This data is then cross-referenced with the location of a Fitness First gym which then sends an SMS to a user’s handset when they are nearby. Read the full story here.

Apps

8 great apps to stay fit, healthy…and alive

The myriad of available health and fitness apps best illustrate how consumer technology such as smartphones have long transcended ‘cool’ and ‘useful’, and now perform far more critical functions in many people’s lives. So here’s a snapshot of just some of the apps that can keep you fit, healthy…and even alive. Read the full list here.

The Eatery’s ‘Fit or Fat’ is as addictive as ‘Hot or Not’. AND you’ll get healthy

Massive Health, a company that focuses on using technology to better our health, has launched a new app today called “The Eatery“. The Eatery pledges to not take up much of your time, as it tracks the types of food you eat, and lets the community decide how healthy you’re eating (or not) as a whole. The app is gorgeous, and addictive to use at the same time. Just 10 days after launch and the Eatery had proven itself addicted after one million food ratings. Read our full review here.

Sports app Endomondo raises $800,000 as fitness becomes social

Danish startup Endomondo, which offers a similar experience to its better-known rival RunKeeper but focuses on social features to help motivate users, has raised $800,000 in its first major round of funding. Read our full story here.

The App That Turns Walking Into a Game

Arookoo is a free app developed by Reader’s Digest Associationand Vivity Labs. It encourages you to get walking by turning the normally rather monotonous action into a series of challenges. The app aims to keep its users motivated and fit by sending them on challenges and exploration tours of their local city. Expectedly, in return, the user gains rewards for their activity. Read our full review here.

Watch our interview with Cake Health, a site that helps you keep track of your health care expenses.

iTriage is kind of like having a Doctor in your pocket

iTriage for iOS lets you self-diagnose (at your own risk) what’s wrong with you when you’re not feeling right. You can search the app by symptoms, specific illnesses, or start with a particular part of your body and drill down to a potential problem. If you’re a hypochondriac, don’t download this app. Read the full story here.

Foodzy brings gamification and social networking to the dinner table

As a writer with a family to feed and schedules that have my wife and I coming and going at any given time, I know how tough it is to maintain healthy eating habits on a consistent basis. And, in case you were unaware, kids can be picky, picky eaters. That means that getting them to healthy over “stealthy” (food that looks healthy, but really isn’t) can be a whole other problem altogether. Foodzy could very well be the answer for me and my family. It adds gamification (especially great for kids) and tracks what users eat and offers points and badges based on eating nutritiously. Read the full story here. Watch out interview with Foodzy here.

ZocDoc Sweeps The Nation Revolutionizing Doctor Patient Relationships

ZocDoc is a free, online service that helps people find local doctors who take their insurance and allows patients to instantly book an appointment for a time that works for them. In most major cities, the average wait time for a doctor’s appointment can average more than 20 days (and even higher in January with cold/flu season, New Year’s resolutions and health care benefits resetting spiking demand for doctors). The company, which we covered in June of this year, uncovers the “hidden supply” of doctors’ appointments (including 10 – 20% that are cancelled last minute), ZocDoc says that 40% of its patients book an appointment within 24 hours; 60% within 3 days. Read the full story here.

One Medical Group wants to put healthcare back into your hands

One company taking full advantage of a more social and technical way of living is One Medical Group. The SF based company was founded by Dr. Tom Lee, who wants to take a new approach on primary care. One Medical Group is like any group of primary physicians in that they take most major insurances, and have a few offices scattered around San Francisco, New York City, and Washington DC for now. The difference is in how you interact with their offices, set up and manage appointments, and ask for assistance with medical questions. Read the full story here.

Health Month, the game that will trick you into a healthier lifestyle

Better fitness and health is something we all talk about and strive for, but it’s usually the last thing we actually dedicate ourselves to. There are a lot of reasons for that including jobs, family, eating a lot of food, drinking a lot of alcohol, and the list goes on and on. Health Month decided to turn your fitness into a game and bring you together with others who want to work hard on living a healthier life. Read the full story here.

iPhone now measures your heart rate with Instant Heart Rate

Read the full story here.

mySugr seeks to change the diabetic world

Although mySugr isn’t alone in the diabetes data logging arena (others include Glucose Buddy, Track 3 and Wavesense) founder Fredrik Debong believes that the mySugr team has streamlined the process and provided value through making the data meaningful more than 3 days later, building upon Debong’s previous data experiments with situational context. mySugr focuses on the key metrics that are important to every diabetic. Read the full story here.

Runmeter releases v6.0 to become the first fitness app to support iOS 5

Runmeter, along with its sister apps Cyclemeter and Walkmeter, all support Notification Center in iOS 5, Apple’s latest operating system for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, making Runmeter the first health and fitness app to support Apple’s newest operating system. The new Notification Center offers users the ability to easily view workout information while running, riding or walking. Read the full story here.

Jawbone’s UP wristband and iPhone app

Jawbone’s UP is a wearable wristband with an iPhone application that combines tracking, analysis, social and motivational elements (like letting you see your friends’ activities!). You wear it 24/7 to track your movement, how well you sleep and how you feel after you eat. Based on this information, Jawbone provides you with personalized recommendations and challenges to live a healthier life. The device became available on November 6th, for just $99. (N.B. Jawbone has since reimbursed customers for the wristbands after a massive wave of negative reviews.) Read the full story here.

Foodzy makes healthy eating fun with a new dashboard and Withings Scale support

For pro users of Foodzy’s service, you’ll see a personal dashboard of your daily stats for calories consumed, the amount of fluids you drank, your favorite food and all time high scores for your weekly calorie and drink intake. The app can even track your weight through integration with the Withings Scale, an Internet-connected device that measures your weight, fat mass and body mass (BMI). You can enter your weight manually if you don’t have the Scale. Read the full story here.

If you want to know how you’ve been feeling over time, try the T2 Mood Tracker

T2 Mood Tracker is an app that aims to help people who suffer from any type of anxiety or mood disorders, such as military veterans who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The app helps all of us track our daily mood though, and provides us with a beautiful graph on how we’re feeling over time. Read the full story here.

And do you know the single best thing you can do for your health? Hint: It only takes 30 minutes.

Did we miss your news? Be sure to let us know so we can keep up with you in 2012!

Image: Yellowj via Shutterstock

iTriage is kind of like having a Doctor in your pocket

Drew Olanoff — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:15:20 +0000

One of the great parts about mobile devices is having the world’s information at your fingertips, whenever you want it. Some apps give you way too much information, and iTriage for iOS could be one of them, even though it’s useful information. But when it comes to your health, I suppose more information than necessary is better than none at all.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with sites like WebMD, iTriage lets you self-diagnose (at your own risk) what’s wrong with you when you’re not feeling right. You can search the app by symptoms, specific illnesses, or start with a particular part of your body and drill down to a potential problem.

If you’re a hypochondriac, don’t download this app. When tapping around to find out issues related to headaches, one of the suggested causes was a brain tumor…yikes. Although, if used in moderation and with good judgement, iTriage is a helpful and handy app to have, especially if you have kids who complain of stomach aches or other mystery illnesses that only happen during school hours from Monday to Friday.

What’s wrong with me, Doc?

As with any information found on the web, if you’re having serious health issues you should see a doctor immediately and not fiddle around with an app.

However, iTriage has some interesting features that help you diagnose a pesky symptom and get basic suggestions on how to treat it or when to see a doctor.

All joking aside, this app will guide you in the right direction when you’re not feeling so hot. For example, you can find doctors in your area who perform certain types of procedures or treat certain types of illnesses. For example, I was able to find five doctors in the San Francisco area to talk to about my Alopecia (hair loss).

The app also has a huge database of medications, and lists out possible side effects and overdose instructions. In short, iTriage could really help you out in a pinch with a lot of your medical questions.

If you do find a potential illness or medical condition that fits the symptoms you’re having, the app will gently suggest a course of action and lists out hospitals in your area. In some cases, iTriage will tell you how long the wait is at its emergency room, which sure beats calling a hospital if you’re already in the car on your way to the ER.

What iTriage does really well is pull together a lot of information into one place and makes it simple to read and digest. While you can’t rely on an app or website to tell you whether to seek medical attention or not, having this type of information readily available does let you breathe a sigh of relief.

➤ iTriage

The Eatery’s ‘Fit or Fat’ is as addictive as ‘Hot or Not’. AND you’ll get healthy

Drew Olanoff — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:04:10 +0000

Massive Health, a company that focuses on using technology to better our health, has launched a new app today called “The Eatery“.

Massive Health is backed by VCs such as Felicis Ventures, Greylock, Andreesen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures & MDV, and describes what it does as:

We are making beautiful products that sit in your pocket and give you deep insight into your health or conditions

The Eatery pledges to not take up much of your time, as it tracks the types of food you eat, and lets the community decide how healthy you’re eating (or not) as a whole. The app is gorgeous, and addictive to use at the same time.

Sharing what you eat

The Eatery app for iOS is beautifully designed. You’re given an introduction to the app as soon as you open it, and you’ll have to log in with your Facebook account. The idea is simple though, take pictures of what you eat, and rate the healthiness of what others eat.

There are some apps for foodies that want you to enter in information about what you’re eating and where you’re eating. The best part about The Eatery is that you don’t have to do any of that. You simply take a photo of what you’re eating, add a one line description if you like, and let everyone else decide on whether you ate healthily or not. The app should force you to write a title for your food, however. I’ve found that one in every 10 food items either aren’t a food item or is something that I don’t recognize.

Once you’ve snapped your photo, you’re taken to a feature called “Fit or Fat” that lets you decide how healthy other foods are. You’re not given the name or profile of the person who ate them, which is a nice key for a judgement free decision.

Fit or Fat

This feature is the genius of The Eatery. In a feature that reminds me of “Hot or Not”, you are shown a food item, and can drag it to towards either “Fit or Fat”. Wherever you decide to place the food item on that scale, the ratings are sent back to whomever ate it, thus changing their score of healthy eating.

As the app slides from one item of food to another, it’s really easy to forget that you’re rating food for a database. Meaning, you could go through twenty or thirty food items in minutes. The more food that gets rated, the more accurate others healthy eating score will be.

All of the ratings that the community enters in, will come back to your score. Over time you’ll be shown a rating of how healthy you’re eating or not. It’s always updating, as more people use the “Fit or Fat” feature. This is a really smart way to get indirect feedback on the foods that you’re eating.

Overall, I think this app could help a lot of people with their eating habits. You can connect with Facebook friends, and follow the foods that they snap, commenting along the way, but the best feedback will be from the community. Maybe your score will drive you to eat better and snap photos of the new foods you’re trying.

Massive Health calls The Eatery a “Massive Health Experiment”, and I could see this one being a success.

Health Month, the game that will trick you into a healthier lifestyle

Drew Olanoff — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:29:16 +0000

Health Month decided to turn your fitness into a game and bring you together with others who want to work hard on living a healthier life.

As the site explains:

Health Month began as a yearly ritual amongst some friends in Boston, New York, and Seattle

The site was created by Buster Benson, which is an adaptation of this yearly ritual between close friends.

We talked to Benson today about why he started Health Month as an online service:

TNW: What about fitness made you want to disrupt it?

Buster Benson: My previous startup, 43things.com, was all about helping people achieve their goals. After 5 years of learning about goals and how to help people, fitness and health was the most rewarding to me. It’s an ancient problem that technology has a new opportunity to help solve, and is something that everyone can relate to.

TNW: What can you do with the points you gain, will you one day be able to get real goods for them?

Buster Benson: After each month, you have a chance to “turn in” your game to one of the 4 spirit animals. That currency, spirit money, currently has no way of being spent, but that’s something that will change fairly soon.

TNW: What types of success stories have you seen or heard, can you share some?

Buster Benson: There are a dozens of stories about people losing 20-40 pounds, training for triathlons, and even improving treatments for illnesses like fibromyalgia. Not to mention hundreds of other stories about people who have finally created a sustainable habit like flossing, or meditation. I would be happy to refer you directly to any users if you have interest in interviewing some.

TNW: What are your future plans for the company? Mobile?

Buster Benson: Yes! We have a new mobile product in development, bud.ge, that will take Health Month to the next level and will be launching before the new year. It’s essentially the next version of this health-improvement vision of creating sustainable, enjoyable, change. In addition to that, better mobile support is also coming for Health Month directly. We’re just getting off the ground over at Habit Labs, and will have lots to share in the next couple months now that we’ve got a full team, and some runway.

Getting started

Once you sign up for Health Month, you can get started right away on setting goals for yourself. The site lets you set up “rules” for a given month in a variety of categories. You can create these goals for diet, exercise, mental wellness, or create your own.

The site is designed extremely well and is straightforward, even though you’ll have to answer questions about each goal individually. Benson has used sliders for most of these things though, which makes setting up goals a snap. For example, I’ve set a goal to lower my caffeine intake. I currently drink a lot of coffee.

Joining a game

Once you’ve set up more than three goals for yourself, you are given a rundown of the difficulty for the month based on the information you’ve given Health Month, as well as a recommendation on a game to join. To join a game, you pay the service $5 for the month, $50 annually, or optionally ask others to sponsor you. To get you started though, Benson has given our lucky readers at The Next Web a code for free games! This could be a great way for friends to help someone do healthier things rather than nag them about it all of the time.

Once you’re in a game, your profile generates status updates based on your activity for that day. If you wanted to drink a glass of water 7 days a week, but skipped a day, your status in the game would reflect that. It makes a healthier lifestyle pretty competitive in a way that most runners and joggers don’t require.

Clearly it’s best to start at the beginning of the month, so that you have a fair shot at winning, but you can jump into a game at any time of the month. There’s quite a few reasons why making fitness a game works, but I suspect that once you get heavily involved, you can find some new friends and encouragement from places that you never knew existed.

If you’re ready to make some life changes, why not have some fun doing it? Give Health Month a try, and get a free game ticket on us and Buster Benson.

One Medical Group wants to put healthcare back into your hands

Drew Olanoff — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:33:25 +0000

Healthcare is something that is getting a facelift as technology advances. In fact, former Apple CEO John Sculley discusses this trend in an interview today on Fast Company.

One company taking full advantage of a more social and technical way of living is One Medical Group.

One Medical Group was founded by Dr. Tom Lee, based in San Francisco, and he wants to take a new approach on primary care.

One Medical Group is like any group of primary physicians in that they take most major insurances, and have a few offices scattered around San Francisco, New York City, and Washington DC for now. The difference is in how you interact with their offices, set up and manage appointments, and ask for assistance with medical questions.

It’s all done online or via their iOS app.

Using its iPhone app, I was able to find an available appointment with a One Medical Group Doctor tomorrow at a time that worked out for me for the nagging cold that won’t go away. The companies target demographic is “busy professionals” and when you arrive, that seems to be spot on. Everyone has their iPhone app. Because the company uses newer systems, the appointment is always on time, and never goes over. This keeps things moving fast if you have a busy work or lifestyle.

With the One Medical Group app, you can also ask for refills, all without picking up the phone. This leads me to believe that one day, you may be able to have a quick Doctor’s appointment over the internet. Or is this too much information to be sharing over the iPhone and desktop? You be the judge.

It’s not all about the app though, the One Medical Group staff is courteous and patient, and the Doctor’s are top notch at their specialities. When I signed up, they matched me to a Dr. based on the medical history I entered into its database. It was a good match.

Do you run, cycle or walk to work? There’s a new type of members club just for you

Nancy Messieh — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:15:14 +0000

H2 was born out of Slater’s personal need to find a place that accommodated his own on-the-run lifestyle, and rather than continue to put up with facilities that didn’t really cater to the health conscious commuter, he decided to come up with a solution himself. The gym has been custom designed, and its features well thought out, ensuring everything that an active commuter might need is at their disposal.

H2 provides shower and changing facilities, bike parking and much more. Commuters can freshen up in style, without having to worry about where they’re going to park their bikes in tight-quartered Soho. And the space is not only an oasis for commuters, it’s also a fully fledged gym with Spinning, personal training, massage and sports injury treatments and even bike service and repair.

The existence of a gym like H2 could be all the encouragement that some might need to ditch their car or public transport in exchange for a healthier, more environmentally way of getting to work.

There are tons of advantages to be had when getting to work with a healthy commute. Not only are you making a positive contribution to your surrounding environment, it will do wonders for your health.

Studies have shown that excercising first thing in the morning can kick in your metabolism and keep it up there for hours, helping you burn calories long after you’ve sat down at your desk. Getting to work in the morning on your bike or with a morning run will also help you throughout your work day. Starting your day with exercise can keep you energised, motivated, keep you in a good mood, and can even help you concentrate.

H2 provides three membership options, Individual, Corporate or Pay as you use, with a range that is flexible enough to suit any kind of lifestyle. H2 is all that’s needed to spend your day at the office smelling like roses, no matter how you chose to get there.

To find out more about H2, check out the video below:

Late night eaters put on more weight, study finds. Regardless of calorie intake.

Joel Falconer — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:20:56 +0000

A new study has found that people who eat after 8pm have higher BMIs (body mass indexes) than those who don’t.

It might sound obvious that those who snack at night put on more weight because it indicates that they simply eat more, but the study says that people who eat the same number of calories earlier in the day have significantly lower BMIs.

The phenomenon may be linked to previous studies, that linked the timing of meals, sleep and light exposure to metabolism and BMI.

It also appears that while the caloric intake of earlier eaters and night eaters may not be significantly different, night eaters are more likely to forego fruit and vegetables, consuming more junk foods.

To consolidate the problem, people who eat late aren’t hungry in time for breakfast and skip the meal, ensuring that their metabolisms don’t get kickstarted for the day.

Brilliant: Gym makes you pay more when you DON’T go

Francis Tan — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:15:44 +0000

It’s the time of the year when everyone signs up for a yearly subscription to their favorite gym that more often than not, are only used a couple of weeks but due to laziness, busy schedules, or whatever reason are completely neglected throughout the year. Two Harvard graduates, however, are determined to change that.

Gym-pact offers what Zhang calls “motivational fees” where customers agree to pay more if they miss their scheduled workouts. They came up with the concept from their behavioral economics class in Harvard where they were taught that people are more motivated by immediate consequences than future possibilities.

True enough, after thinking about it, it’s more difficult for for anyone to have to dish out cash while missing a gym session rather that say, gaining a couple of pounds, a bigger waistline, or other health consequences that may or may not even happen in the future. This might not be a crazy idea after all.

Basically, Gym-pact operates by negotiating a group rate with Planet Fitness, then paying off the membership fees for participants. They will agree on a weekly schedule and if the members miss a session or opt out of the program for unexcused reasons, they will have to pay. That money will be used to pay for more gym memberships and to build a financial aid fund. The company will eventually make money from referral fees and revenue-sharing affiliate programs with gyms.

The founders plan to tweak the fee structure to allow it to be customized to a customer’s goals. Future iterations may include a combination of discounted gym memberships and smaller penalties that apply daily rather than weekly.

This just might be the gym program that will be get me back into shape. Gyms could really learn a thing or two from this and I hope to see more of it around the globe.

How to stay online while you get in shape this new year

Martin Bryant — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:01:45 +0000

So, the new year has arrived and you want to get in shape. The trouble is, you love the Internet (perhaps a little too much) – how can you stay online while keeping fit? Luckily there are quite a few ways, from exercising at your desk to apps that combine working out with online social features.

Get a workout while you work

If you really can’t drag yourself away from your computer, why not exercise right at your desk? Isokinetics Pedal Exercisers allow you to stay physically active while you work by keeping your legs moving.

If you’re worried that moving a mouse around and typing isn’t a good enough workout for your upper limbs (hint: it’s not), you can move the equipment onto the desk and give your arms a quick go on the pedals while you keep an eye on your screen.

The manufacturers say that regular use will improve circulation, muscle strength, joint range of motion, and coordination.

The desk/workout station combo

If money is no object, the $4599 Sit-to-Walkstation could be the perfect choice for working out while you work. Combining a treadmill with an office desk, its height can be adjusted to standing level, allowing you to keep moving without leaving the office.

Then, when you need a rest, just readjust the height of the desk and place a chair next to the treadmill. An attached console shows your speed and calories burned, plus the time and distance you’ve covered.

This is definitely in the luxury bracket but if you have the spare cash and the will to keep fit without stopping work, it could be worth the investment.

Stay online at the gym

If you’d prefer to get out of the house and into the gym, the SurfShelf could be just what you need. Clipping on to many treadmills, cycle and exercise machines, it lets you rest your laptop while you gently walk, jog or cycle.

We wouldn’t recommend doing an intensive workout while you check your email, but if you’re just interested in keeping moving while you work it could be exactly what you need.

As we mentioned in our previous coverage of the product, one reviewer described it as “One of my favorite inventions ever”.

Track and share your weight online

The Withings Scale does more than just tell you what you weigh right now. This 21st Century scale ties into an online service that keeps track of important stats like your body mass and fatty mass so you can see how you’re progressing in your quest for the body beautiful. You can view your latest figures in a browser or via an iPhone.

What’s more, real over-sharers can set this WiFi-enabled device to automatically tweet out their weight each day. While that might seem a bit like Too Much Information, it could be just the encouragement you need to keep at it. After all, you don’t want your followers seeing you fail, do you?

Get training plans and learn more about what you eat

Daily Burn is a website that lets you to keep track of your calorie intake and other nutrition information along with customised training plans. Motivational groups let you compare your progress with, and set challenges for, other people.

Meanwhile, the service’s iPhone apps let you to log your training progress, check nutritional information of food you eat using barcode scanning and take part in ‘Push up wars’ against others. Daily Burn membership costs $9.99 per month, although there’s a free 7-day trial period.

Track your fitness on the go

A number of apps designed to help you keep fit while sharing your progress online are available for most mobile platforms.

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPod Nano, the range of Nike+ apps are designed to track your progress and keep you motivated by using a sensor in your running shoe and music that can be set to reflect your pace and push you onward. After your workout, you can share your results online or just keep them to yourself, comparing your performance over time.

Other useful apps include Runkeeper for iPhone and Android which offers similar social fitness features and lets friends track your progress in real time on a map. The Pro version of Runkeeper is free throughout January so it’s worth downloading it, even if you don’t think you’ll be using it in the longterm. Endomondo is another competitor and is available for a large number of handsets including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia.

Get regular exercise with help from your phone

Another way to stay active at your desk is with FitFu. This iPhone app gives you small exercises to do regularly wherever you are, tracking your progress with the handset’s accelerometer.

A social element to the app allows you to compare your progress with friends’, whether you just want to cheer them on or compete for points. Yes, FitFu gives you a score and you can “Level up” the more you keep using it.

The app is currently on offer for the reduced price of 99 cents, so grab before 4 January to take advantage of the discount.

Meanwhile, GymFu offers a range of mobile apps that offer a similar experience but concentrating on individual exercises – pushups, pullups, crunches and squats.

If you have any more tips for staying connected while you keep fit, leave a comment and let us know.