Background:

Health consciousness is now increasing worldwide and companies also feel that they have a social responsibility to maintain the health of their employees. But maintaining the health of a large number of employees is not easy. We focused on the health checkup, an annual event when each person faces their health.

To raise employees’ health awareness, we designed a “data Olympics” health improvement competition using employees’ health data.

Idea:

The Checkup Championship.

In this world-first health competition, employees compete to see how much their health has improved over the previous year based on health data from their annual health checkups. A new service was developed as an industry-academia-government project to motivate employees to become health aware and health conscious.

Execution:

Competition

Nine categories were created based on blood, eyesight and urine tests and blood pressure, waist, height and weight measurements taken during health checkups. Participants compete amongst themselves in every category based on their health improvement since the previous year’s checkup.

Yearly health improvements as scores

Health data was visualized so improvements could be seen easily, and given to each participant as feedback.

Motivating health improvement actions

A variety of educational events were offered to enlighten participants about exercise and diet so they could prepare themselves for the Checkup Championship.

Results:

About 2,000 people participated in the first Checkup Championship.

The event changed annual health checkups into a competition, successfully improving the health of employees. Employees’ health consciousness and behavior has gradually changed.

Target audience outcomes:

– 78.9% of participants improved their health (compared to the previous year).

– One in three participants noticed improvement in their metabolic syndrome scores.

– One in two participants decreased their risk of becoming diabetic.

– One in two improved their previous year’s abnormal blood pressure scores.

– One in three improved their previous year’s abnormal liver function scores.

Business outcomes:

Several leading companies subsequently introduced the Checkup Championship to their annual health checkups. A patent is now pending for Checkup Championship.