Bupa Boost – Encouraging Engagement With Health & Wellbeing

Bupa Boost is a new way for employees to set health and wellbeing objectives and to track progress. A smart phone app that aims to provide accessibility, hospital employee engagement and help people work towards improving health and wellbeing, more about Bupa Boost has been designed to encourage people to become really engaged in their own fitness.

There are plenty of health trackers on the market, but this offering from Bupa aims to provide information on health matters as well as, further down the line, coaching services. In other words, it’s not just about tracking your health and fitness and monitoring progress, but about finding out what changes you can adopt to bring about real improvements.

That is the theory – but Bupa Boost is still in the early days of its post-roll out development. How is it working in practice? Nick Lipczynski, managing director at IHC, says: “The app looks the part. It is fresh looking, engaging and stimulating. On the down side, it is possibly too simple – offering rewards relatively easily and perhaps not challenging people enough.”

For Paul Roberts, consultant for IHC, the app has some very positive aspects. “Bupa Boost works like a game – there are levels of achievements and different challenges for people to enter. Before Christmas, a group who self-selected themselves had a challenge to make 1 million steps. They managed to reach their goal. And recently, a challenge including even more people succeeded in meeting a 10 million step challenge. There is no denying that these are big achievements and certainly nice to be part of.”

The app is essentially a platform, bringing in stepometer information from your phone using the MOVES app. “This makes it more accessible to all, as it does not have to cost you anything extra to join in,” says Paul. “Like a lot of people, I currently wear a FITBIT and the data is automatically uploaded to Bupa Boost, showing the steps you take each day, and the app issues points if you hit certain predetermined goals, or goals you might have set yourself.”

It remains to be seen whether Bupa Boost makes the waves in the market that Bupa is hoping for, but in the meantime the app may have opened up the space for a different kind of health tracking and a way to encourage staff to take their health seriously – while having fun.