Business of Well-being

Promoting Wellness with Mobile Apps: The Healthy and Fitness Revolution

Corporate wellness is very much an issue of physical and technological mobility, with the latter inspiring more of the former; which is to say, the most effective way to motivate employees to take better care of themselves, and the most affordable means of achieving that goal, involves finding the right application for your Android or Apple smartphone.


It concerns a comprehensive solution that enables users to monitor their fitness and nutrition, as well as their exercise regimens, weight loss routines and their accountability - to themselves and their fellow members - within a dynamic online community.

This solution is necessary as a matter of medical urgency and financial necessity because, on the one hand, we have a national epidemic of obesity and early onset of Type 2 Diabetes and, on the other, we need a system that people can easily adopt - a program they will want to use - that is convenient, accessible and a catalyst for positive change. We must have this process available right now.

Take, for example, MevoLife, which is a simple download - a single tap or touch from transforming how and why we approach matters of health and personal wellness. Call this the Mobility Revolution, where mobile applications make us mobile - they get us moving - so we can improve our strength, enhance our conditioning, and encourage our path toward weight loss and better living.

I write these words as someone who knows how often people use their smartphones to read and receive news and information, to work and workout, which makes the right  application an ideal method of emphasizing the importance of corporate wellness in general.

Remember, too, that that situation, a healthy and productive workforce, is impossible without already healthy and able employees. Meaning: Personal wellness begets corporate wellness, which begets a safer - and stronger - workplace, period.

We can accomplish this mission, and do so with maximum convenience and zero interference, by bringing the mobile revolution to the office. Indeed, we are the agents of age because we possess the articles of change - the mobile devices of change - in the palms of our hands: We take and use them at work, which makes it easy for us to segue from finance (or any other subject) to fitness.

Thus, there is no learning curve to this process; there is no need for complex tutorials, arcane manuals and ancient (to members of the digital age) texts. These benefits accrue to employers and employees alike, making corporate wellness a reality for millions of people nationwide. That scenario is too substantial to dismiss, too significant to ignore and too sacred to destroy.

Rhetoric aside, the practicality factor reigns supreme. That is, when you have a resource that people will download and use, and when you further incentivize them with your own set of company rewards, you markedly increase the probability of success.

Mobilized to control their health, and socialized to improve wellness and nutrition, we have the chance to inaugurate a better way of living.

Let us seize this moment.

About the Author

Michael D. Shaw is a columnist, biochemist and protegue of the late Willard Libby, the 1960 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He writes about a variety of subjects including wellness, health care, and business leadership.

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