Chandigarh firm keeps an eye on American obesity

Oct. 22, 2008 - PRLog -- For an America that is growing obese by each passing day, advanced healthcare policies are attaining utmost importance. While some like Barak Obama are harping on health insurance and Hillary Clinton is wooing voters with lesser outsourcing to India, American companies are still gung-ho on India.

And it is not for outsourcing that American biggies are dependent on India. Based in the suburbs of Chicago, one-year old startup Engagement Health (EH), which has come up with web-based solutions that double up as obesity controllers for employees, sources its software from Chandigarh based smartdata Enterprises.

Being one of the vendors to EH, smartdata has developed an adherence website and supporting software for the company which monitors and controls health systems of people who opt for the program. Blood pressure, weight, exercise, smoking habits and stress related problems are some of the programs being offered to companies across the US.

“The program that our company offers finds relevance in nearly every firm in the US, since companies are spending nearly $8,000 a year on employee healthcare. Our programs help reduce this cost,” says EH chief information officer Javed Hussain. He was in Chandigarh recently.

“The prevalence of obesity has increased at an average rate of 0.3 percentage points to 0.8 percentage points across different socio-demographic groups over the past three decades. Further, obesity is a public health crisis. If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, by 2015, 75% adults and nearly 24% US children and adolescents will be overweight or obese:” states a report from John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Therefore, companies like Streamline Healthcare and Direct Alliance (insurers) will together have 700 people enrolling for primarily the weight check program along with others. Engagement Health has a number of contracts in the pipeline which will take its membership count to 18,000 by the end of June.
The company has created a model where private enterprises motivate employees to participate in health related programs. The adherence to these programs is based on incentives; for example, good results in weight loss entitle the participant to monetary premium which acts as a motive towards more money and in turn better health.

smartData Enterprises (India) Ltd.
www.smartdatainc.net

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