Google Fit is Google’s answer to a health tracking platform. Like Fitbit and Apple Healthkit, it was designed to help individuals monitor and improve their physical activity, fitness and overall wellness. It works across Android devices, wearables (like Wear OS smartwatches),and other fitness apps to centralise health data in one place. Despite being a 'consumer' product, the information gathered by Google Fit can be made available to businesses with users permission. This provides a wealth of data that companies can utilise to help their own employees with their health and wellbeing, develop tools for use by those in the healthcare industry and assess risks for those in industries such as insurance.
Google Fit offers a powerful, flexible platform that businesses can use to capitalise on health, wellness and fitness related services. Whilst it is primarily a consumer product as covered above, it also provides developers and organisations with access to user health and activity data (with consent), making it a valuable tool for expanding digital offerings, improving user engagement and supporting wellbeing initiatives. Lets take a closer look at what businesses can do with Google Fit.
Providing they have permission (yes, we keep emphasising this!), businesses can access daily health related data for individuals including steps taken, active minutes, calories burned, sleep duration etc. This data can then be used to power features including progress tracking, personalised recommendations and health insights in third party apps and platforms.
Google Fit offers a set of APIs that allow developers to read and write fitness data, integrate with other health platforms and build experiences across Android, Wear OS and the web. This means companies can build cross platform health and wellbeing tools, sync them with other fitness apps and devices and provide real time feedback to it's users.
Integrating their own applications with Google Fit allows businesses to create more interactive, versatile and rewarding user experiences. For example, fitness apps can automatically update users' progress so health insurers can offer reward based wellness programs and corporate wellness platforms can gamify activity tracking for it's employees adding an element of fun to keeping fit and healthy.
We've touched on this already but businesses who are already or aspire to offer corporate wellness programmes can use Google Fit to provide various initiatives to keep their workforce in tip top shape. Having the ability to measure activity levels and track engagement means these initiatives can be refined and expanded for maximum buy in.
Healthtech companies and researchers can utilise anonymised, aggregated health data to analyse patterns, improve patient care and validate digital health interventions which promotes responsible innovation.
Now, let's take a look at some of the best types of projects for Google Fit.
As we touched on above, Google Fit provides real time access to key health metrics including steps, heart rate and active minutes. This makes it easy for fitness apps to track progress, set goals and encourage healthy behaviour without building a tracking system from scratch. Integration also allows users to bring their existing fitness data with them.
Again, we have mentioned this already but it is worth mentioning again! With user consent, companies can use Google Fit data to measure employee activity, reward healthy habits and personalise their corporate wellness programs. It's wide device compatibility allows for easy onboarding without the need for special hardware.
There has been a significant rise in telehealth platforms due to their convenience and ability to save on time and resources. Google Fit can feed real time activity, heart rate and sleep data into remote healthcare platforms which in turn, helps clinicians monitor patient behaviour between visits, flag health risks and support lifestyle based treatment plans.
Health insurers can incentivise policyholders to stay active and healthy by offering discounts, points or perks based on Google Fit tracked metrics. It provides a reliable and secure way to verify activity data across a broad user base.
Researchers can use anonymised, aggregated Google Fit data to study behaviour patterns, lifestyle trends or correlations between physical activity and health outcomes all without building their own costly data pipelines.
Our team has the knowledge and experience to deliver powerful solutions that support your business goals. We've worked with a number of UK health companies on their own Google Fit projects and bring that insight and experience to every new client. Whether you're looking to build a full featured app or simply integrate specific data streams, we can help. From fully developed concepts to early stage ideas, we work closely with you to bring your vision to life.
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