Get to know the SmartWork Services: healthyMe

The ambition of SmartWork’s holistic approach is to support active and healthy ageing at work for older office workers, through a suite of smart services, building a Worker-Centric AI System for work ability sustainability. In other words, keeping ageing people working for longer by supporting them with unobtrusive sensing and monitoring of their health, behaviour, cognitive and emotional status, and responding to their needs.

The SmartWork services are divided into the three categories:

1. Services for office workers
2. Services for employers
3. Services for care providers

With this blog series we want to present the service and their functionalities, and invite the readers to test them in their working environments. The first service that was launched is healthyMe, developed by Roessingh Research and Development, which monitors the physiological and behavioural parameters for efficient self-management of chronic health conditions.

What’s healthyMe and how does it support the older office workers?

healthyMe is a smartphone application that supports older office workers in achieving a healthy lifestyle during their work and leisure time. With the help of a friendly virtual agent, Amelia, older workers receive personalized coaching on how to improve their physical activity, sleep quality and healthy eating routine. healthyMe also supports older workers managing their energy throughout the day, helping them to balance their energy and making sure there is enough left for the activities that are meaningful to them.

What is healthyMe helping with?

In short, the healthyMe smartphone application has the following aims:

• To create awareness about the current lifestyle of the individual, with respect to physical activity, sleeping and eating habits;
• Together with the user, establish personalized goals that are challenging, but achievable, in order to keep the user motivated in the journey towards a healthy lifestyle;
• Together with the user, define action plans that match the preferences and daily routines of the user;
• With the user’s permission, promote social support by sharing the data collected, goals and/or action plans with formal and informal caregivers who can further help the user in achieving a healthy lifestyle.

How does it work?

In short, healthyMe:

• Monitors the physical activity, sleep and eating habits by using data collected through off-the-shelf sensors;
• Targets the advice about the healthy lifestyles and work energy sustainability through a friendly conversational agent.

“The healthyMe app is one of the most extensive smartphone apps we have developed to date. It’s really nice to put all the pieces together and make it come to life.” Dennis Hofs, Senior Software Developer at Roessingh Research and Development[2] 

Bearing in mind that the health and wellbeing of the employees are important for their work performance, the healthyMe service supports the work sustainability of the older office worker, which is the main objective of SmartWork project. The application is now launched in Google Playstore and will be available soon also in Apple Store. We are approaching the time when the application is ready for its first tests with end-users. We are hoping that we reach our objectives of creating a “companion” application that is enjoyable to use for extended periods of time, something that travels along with you, and you’re interested to have a look at on a regular basis.

If people want to use the healthyMe app, we expect it can have a good impact in steering lifestyles in a healthy direction.

Read more about all SmartWork services here.

Download the healthyMe from Google Playstore and test it yourself. For the research code, contact Miriam Cabrita from Roessingh Research and Development at M.Cabrita@rrd.nl