Network service to enhance self-improvement activities for health: A challenge to change passive social model to active health creation and disease prevention

Redirection of the literacy of the general public as well as the public policies and industry strategies to change the passive social model depending on medicines and surgery after disease are found to active health creation and disease prevention was proposed by JATES, an industrial society, based on its Sensor Network Study Project on Health and Medical Care. Application and management of the sensor network technology and associated services were urged for the purpose. Social experiments to explore the feasibility of the proposal and followed founding of the start-up, Health Improvement Net Service, LLC, to realize the proposals as business has offered promising prospect for the ultimate change of the social model. Although the challenge is at an early stage, there have been encouraging findings for the bottom up, emergency approach utilizing the sensor network and associated services as follows: 1) Benefit of the sensor network platform for continuous sensing and interactive communication. The platform also serves as a test bed of new sensor devices for manufacturers. 2) Effectiveness of continuous and regular sensing and offering motivators. It has been shown that linearly scaled indices and interactive communication are most effective for urging clients to self-improvement activities and stepping up the activity stages. 3) Solution by self-improvement activities for urgent problems as a strong, killer motivator. It has been shown that the self-improvement solution for urgent problems can be a strong, killer motivator to urge clients to habitual actions for health. 4) Positive feedback cycle formation to encourage each to step up the stages Formation of positive feedback cycles have been observed, where motivated actions improve health indices and improvement further motivates actions, allowing for each to step up the activity stages The bottom up, emergency approach will hopefully generate convinced clients to become opinion leaders and influence a large number of population. Based on the accumulated evidence on the effectiveness of the service, collaboration with health insurance associations as well as large organizations are pursued to acquire the scale required for influential platforms to ultimately change the passive social model.