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Wellcoin has launched in an effort to encourage healthy lifestyles – healthcare’s answer to Bitcoin, kind of

Would you work out or sleep more if you knew you'd get a credit to shop at Whole Foods?

Would you engage in healthy behaviors more often if you knew you would reap some consumer-based benefits from it?

Wellcoin, the Boston-based creator of the World’s First Health Currency, has officially launched. taking some influence from Bitcoin, the company is trying to encourage members to keep track of how they are maintaining a health lifestyle, and they are rewarded in return.

When using Wellcoin, members report healthy activities that then increase their compensation. It isn’t just an imaginary way of keeping track of progress, members have access to an extensive online marketplace stocked with goods and services from companies like Skechers, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Pure Barre, Whole Foods Market and a lot of other fitness partners and vendors, according to PR Newswire.

The website and app are free, and the ways members can earn Wellcoins vary. For example, being active, sleeping at least seven hours a night, drinking or eating something healthy – these are all ways to earn points. Syncing up with fitness monitoring wearables also helps to increase a member’s credibility when earning points, as well as using other fitness or diet-related apps.

“Wellcoin was founded on the premise that rewarding people for easy-to-adopt, positive behaviors can help create lasting lifestyle changes,” said Glenn Laffel, MD, PhD, a Wellcoin Founder and a former attending physician in the cardiac transplantation program at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, as PR Newswire reported.

“Our members are inspired by the fantastic rewards in our Marketplace, and also by our community and the support it provides,” he added. “Wellcoin invokes a broad, welcoming, inclusive view of health and wellness. We recognize that everyone makes many healthy choices every day. We meet folks where they are today, and help them step forward to create new healthy habits for themselves.”

If this ends up being successful, programs like Wellcoin will take New Year’s resolutions to a whole other level in 2016.

Photo: Flickr user marcovdz

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