The health insurance carriers and large employers are well aware of the benefits of regular exercise and they stand to financially gain the most by its widespread adoption, but the major obstacle seems to be in motivating employees to exercise regularly and stick with the program. The first wave of incentives by employers was to reimburse employees for their health club memberships. The logic being that the nominal cost of a health club membership across a population can slice the after-the-fact disease treatment costs. But a paid membership doesn’t necessarily translate into “sweat”.
After all, if employees won’t exercise for a longer healthier life, perhaps they’ll exercise for retail items or a trip. “The challenge with both of these”, says Reed Hanoun, President and inventor of MyTrak HealthTM, “Is that you don’t know if (a) they ever showed up at gym or (b) even if a card swipe mechanism verifies that they did show up, were they exercising at a level to derive health benefit?
The MyTrak Network a New ParadigmHanoun has a new vision for the fitness industry. Drawing from his background of collecting biometric data for corporations to assess risk in performing physical labor with employee candidates, he felt the technology has progressed to where certain biometric data could be gathered automatically as people exercise. As enough exercise sessions are completed and enough data is gathered, a composite picture of fitness state emerges both for individuals and for entire population segments.
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