Wireless giant Qualcomm has kicked off a fitness challenge for its employees, in a bid to raise awareness of its wireless health initiatives and the development of new medical technologies.
The challenge is comprised of four teams of eight people using Withings weight scales and/or a BodyMedia FIT armband to keep track of how many calories they’ve burned and weight they’ve lost, as well as keeping track of sleep and activity levels over eight long weeks. All the data from the wireless sensors is then beamed to the cloud where it’s mashed up and the results weighed to determine the biggest winners, and losers.
Already in the first week, the challenge seems to be yielding impressive results, with one participant tweeting: “1st wk daily avg stats: 2,466 calories burned, 10,049 steps, 5.58 hrs of sleep (yikes!).”
“Qualcomm is committed to helping companies in the medical device, pharmaceutical and health service industries to innovate new connected mobile health solutions and business models,” said Don Jones, Qualcomm’s VP of Health and Life Science business unit in a blog post explaining the challenge.
Jones added that Qualcomm has been working for years “to build a global industry ecosystem to accelerate the convergence of wireless and health care, and to promote the many benefits that wireless health affords consumers, physicians, and the broken health care system as a whole”.
The FIT armband, worn by the competitors day and night, pushes them into a period of a constant activity instead of a spasmodic one, ensuring unequivocal commitment.
The big, fat publicity stunt has the added benefit of being a fun, team building, motivational activity, with obvious win-wins, not only for the competitors, but also for the promotion of the tested products. One also has to give credit to the employees, having sufficient candour and willingness to let the world know their weight, both before, after and during.
One wonders, however, whether this challenge might have been more beneficial had it been open to the wider population, such as under 21’s and retired senior citizens, both age groups experiencing burgeoning obesity rates.
All in all, however, we have to hand it to Qualcomm for bringing its wireless acumen to the real world, tackling actual health issues, improving 32 people’s lives short term, and hopefully many more in the near future.
