Mobile Health and Fitness Apps: Enhancing Dieting, Exercise and Wellbeing

Over the past few months we’ve taken a close look at the retail industry, the healthcare industry and many other industries—focusing on a vast variety of usage scenarios contained within. Today we’ll continue the conversation by exploring health and fitness apps.

New Opportunities for Health Product Retailers and Manufacturers

Consumers around the globe have always strived to be a part of the latest and greatest health trends, engaging in timeless fascination with the latest diets, recipes, supplements and a variety of other health products. Through utilizing the global distribution of mobile devices, health and fitness product retailers and manufacturers can empower consumers to connect with their products directly from any smartphone device. The mobile smartphone has effectively condensed the health product marketplace into a pocket-sized storefront, creating a massive new sales channel and an opening the door to new markets around the world.  These health and fitness apps are used in a variety of ways that stretch from acting as a sleep monitor to telling you about drug interactions with the simple scan of a barcode.

Here are some common uses of health and fitness apps:

– Check a food product for nutrition and allergen information

– Compare prices in-store while buying food products, vitamins and supplements

– Ordering health-related products from home or any location

– Logging foods eaten to maintain a diet

– Tracking biometrics such as “steps walked” or sleep patterns

Using a smartphone to access health and fitness information or health-related product information has become an everyday process for many consumers who are committed to living healthy lives and concerned with their wellbeing. The ability for a smartphone to deliver health product metadata opens up a world of possibilities for developers designing health and fitness apps.

Enhancing a Health and Fitness App with Scandit Technology

With Scandit’s innovative Barcode Scanner SDK and Product API retailers and manufacturers can create simple and elegant mobile health and fitness apps. Our fast and reliable barcode scanning technology ensures consumers will be able to quickly interact with any product, and through our product data services retailers can provide access valuable data associated with popular health and fitness products. Some examples of popular health and fitness apps using Scandit include MyFitnessPal and Medpex Apotheke.  Watch the video to get a sense of the user experience:

Building a Mobile Health and Fitness App

So you’re convinced, it’s time to build a mobile health and fitness app. What needs to happen next?

1)      Decide if you want to hire a solution provider to build your app, or build one in house.

2)      Decide which platforms you’d like the app to run on.

3)      Assess which systems you need the app to work with. What kind of database does the app need to connect with to provide users with product information?

4)      Identify the features you need, and find the best software components for the job.
(Our Barcode Scanner SDK and Product API are perfect for mobile health and fitness apps).

5)      Build and test your app (watch the Scandit integration video)

6)      Deploy and enjoy.

Need help making a decision? Our sales staff is here to help. Contact us for more information.

Stay tuned for as we continue the discussion with more usage scenarios and mobile trends coming soon!