Insight Community

I know you said to avoid iPhone specific apps, but being a new user of the iPhone I can't help but blurb a little about it here.  I also have some non-iPhone specific ideas below. 

This post is less of a "what's available" and more of a "I wish..." angle.  Buyer beware.

So being a previous Sidekick, 2-time Treo user and a current owner of an HTC Mogul (as well as my brand new iPhone 3G) I feel qualified enough to state that the iPhone is literally about 3 years ahead of the competition.  The possibility for apps on this platform are endless, and Apple's innovation is only going pave the way for every other phone manufacturer to copy their features.  So looking to them to provide never-before-seen mobile applications is important.  Hell, the iPhone apps for Gmail, Facebook and Myspace are the best mobile apps I have ever seen, and we won't even talk about the really good ones.  But I digress.  My iPhone idea would be to write a walking application that uses the internal iPhone accelerometers to track number of footsteps taken.  Combine that with the GPS features and you now have a complex way of measuring how many footsteps have taken place in a given time, or a given day, and is correlated to how much distance was traveled.  Plug that into an interactive website or social networking site (Facebook app?) and let people share real time stats, walking routes / trails, compete for steps per minute, etc.  How's that for a mobile workout app?  Only the iPhone can do this today.

Other ideas for non-iPhones.  How about a bluetooth heart rate monitor that will work with any phone?

How about a bluetooth earset that also records steps taken?  We wear those stupid things on our ears all day, might as well get some benefit out of them while we're all looking like complete nerds.

How about a mobile app that ties into a workout web app?   Part of the problem with workouts is recording your workout, ie, how many reps/sets you did, on which machine with which weight.  If you transcribe that into a journal, and then transcribe that onto a website, that's just too much work for some people.  If you had a mobile app that you put all that info directly into, which talked directly to a workout social networking website, you'd be golden.  Then the next day, your workout plan would be ready for you on your phone and you're good to go.  Just like having push calendaring keeps us on time for our appointments, push workout plans could help us stay on our workout plans.

Take that same idea and apply it to meal plans and schedules.  Add a database of foods and calories for people on the run who want to find out how much fat is in a Whopper.   Plug those meal records into social networking.  Think Facebook apps here.

How about a mobile app so people who go to the same gyms can find workout buddies?  How about a beacon app to broadcast to other gym rats your workout routine and see if they want to join in or chat about it?

A beacon app could tell you how many people are at the gym, saving you a wasted trip if it's too busy.

I could go on and on, but those ideas are probably the most easily implementable in the next 3-5 years.  I've been dying for a health-oriented social networking site for ages. 

Perhaps the mobile market is the best way to break new ground?

Ok, back to worshipping my iPhone.

By far the best mobile website I could find for fitness tracking is the Health and Fitness mobile site. All the other apps I found were either iPhone-specific, or cost some huge amount of money based on SMS services which I believe to be a huge ripoff. I would much rather just enter my workout data directly into a website and get results either on the phone or later when I have access to a real PC/Mac. http://www.hfm2go.com/website_new_mobile/index.php?page=workout_list

With the growing number of Smartphone options, health and medical related applications are likely to enter the mobile application market soon.  However as of today there are in fact very few unless you consider the mobile-ready data provided at the major health websites, which remain an excellent source of online health information. 

These sites include:

WebMD

Yahoo Health,

Health.com

I think the reason for so few health applications is simple demographics.   Thousands of mobile applications feature gaming, socializing, search, pictures, etc.   Health is not generally a key issue for younger audiences which constitute the overwhelming majority of smartphone and mobile users.   We're still on a learning curve with the mobile web, so early adopters simply have not come around to showing interest in health applications. 

Google and Microsoft Health (for management of personal health records) show a lot of mobile promise (as well as carrying some important privacy / data security challenges) since you can access your entire health history in well organized fashion very easily.

It is this last category where I think we'll see a lot of early resistance but gradual adoption, where the user can help the doctor manage their health much more effectively thanks to a rich data history that everybody can review more easily.

Do you think more mobile phones will integrate biophysical sensors -- such as heartrate monitors?

Eventually I think this type of convergence will be commonplace, but not for many years.   We will see these only on a limited basis and more as a "cool" feature than a practical one.   Again, the issue is demographics.  Health is simply not the key concern of the mainstream users of these devices.   

Dieting is of some concern to those who are likely to have the devices, but technology and the social mechanisms needed for most people to successfully diet are unlikely to converge all that soon, though it's possible some of the experimental social networking diet approaches will show promise eventually.  

Here are several Windows mobile diet programs, but I remain skeptical that the demographic match will work to create a strong user base for any of these or for similar programs.

Summary:  Killer Mobile Health applications remain a gleam in the eyes of their future creators who will have to see an older smartphone population before they'll see much success.