The meaning of health hacks and urine data

Through the ideas about friendly challenges, brought to us by Shape Up Clubs who came in third at Health Hack Day, we got to see how their one million existing users can encourage each other to exercise and control their weight. Thanks to the snore-recording app Snapp, coming in second, we learned how sleep apnea could easily be diagnosed from home.

With a mug filled with pee, the winners at Health Hack Day demonstrated how their app could generate data out of urine. A diabetic could easily send his or her results to the doctor, instead of having to go to the hospital for analysis. That is very meaningful for a person with diabetes.

Points and rewards aren’t enough to achieve a healthy lifestyle change, Megan Miller of Bonnier R&D claimed during Friday’s panel discussion. She offered the example of Team in training, where you can donate money to research on cancer through your exercise. There is a higher meaning. To achieve behavior change, meaning is necessary. You can watch Megan’s talk here.

Seeing all the participants work hard to find solutions to health problems during 24 hours was exciting. To me it was clear that there was a higher meaning with Health Hack Day. And I am sure that the impressive creations of this weekend will be meaningful to a great number of users.

/Oskar