Kids today are moving less and eating more to the point that one in three of them is overweight or obese, and technology – television, computers, video games, etc. – has taken some of the blame.
Coleman Greene is part of the group that would argue that it doesn’t have to be that way. That is, technology doesn’t have to be the problem; it can actually be part of the solution. Green is the co-founder of Sqord, a digital health startup trying to squash kids’ sedentary habits by turning exercise into a game.
“I came across the FitBit and fell in love with the concept,” he said. Since that market was already becoming saturated, Greene, then an MBA candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, began thinking of ways that kind of technology could be simplified and transformed into something that would encourage activity in a younger demographic.
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With some bootstrapped and friends and family money and a spot in Carolina Launch Pad’s incubator, Sqord was born, and by the summer of 2011 it was ready for its first pilot.
The startup is going after a market of 8 to 13-year-olds, although Greene said the device has been especially popular among the 8 to 11 crowd.
In designing a health-focused product that kids would actually want to use, Greene said a few things quickly became clear: It had to be customizable, it had to be fun and it had to be social.
Let’s start with customizable. The tracker itself is a three-axis accelerator housed along with a battery in a sealed, waterproof device about the size of a watch face. It fits into a rubber band that’s worn around the wrist like a watch, or can be popped out and carried in a pocket (the preferred way for pre-teen guys, Greene noted). The $20 device captures the intensity and duration of kids’ movements, and when it’s swiped over a companion sync station that connects to a computer, that information is transferred to the child’s account on the Sqord website.
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This is where the fun and social parts come in. Kids create the digital version of themselves in the form of a PowerMe, similar to a Mii on the Nintendo Wii system. When their information is loaded online, their steps, jumps and strokes convert into points that they can track. With those points, they can compete against their friends and earn medals for reaching their goals. They can also see what their friends have been doing and give them kudos with virtual “high-fives.”
For kids to adopt and integrate this kind of technology in their daily lives, it was important that the social element be built on real-life relationships, Greene said. That way, it becomes something they talk about with their friends or in their classrooms.
And that seems to be what’s actually happening, based on early tests of Sqord. Greene said the company has found that the best way to build its initial user base has been by deploying the device through schools and youth organizations. Last summer, the company began testing the band with kids through the YMCA in Chapel Hill. Within a few months, the company landed its first paid pilot.
The next step of the business model calls for Sqord to target insurers, who would “sponsor” use of the device through their plans. Eventually, though, Greene thinks the market will be receptive to a direct-to-consumer model.
Although it’s continuing to build a customer base, Sqord faces plenty of competition. Kid-friendly activity trackers are also being made by GeoPalz and MOVABLE (whose model is focused on schools). A company called Zamzee has also gotten some traction with its clip-on activity meter, winning support from the nonprofit HopeLab, which has partners in Cigna, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Permanente to name a few.
But Sqord is marching on, armed with $70,000 it won last year from ChildObesity180’s Active School Acceleration Project Technology Innovation award and North Carolina’s Health Innovation Challenge.
For the near future, Greene said the focus is on building the customer base, collecting more data and making improvements to the device, like extending the battery life from nine months to a year (it’s not rechargeable, so the device will only last as long as the battery). He also wants to add some more functionalities to the online component, particularly enabling it to tag periods of high activity, so that kids can see where the majority of their points and their friends’ points are coming from. He said he’d also like to expand the social capabilities to allow organizations push out information on group events.
It’s all in the name of getting kids moving, keeping it fun and avoiding inactive lifestyles that have been linked to obesity. “We think any activity is good activity,” Greene said.
[MedCity News photo]
