Stress is a huge issue for everyone in the world today. It can affect every part of daily life, from your health to your mood. Often, stress is a cause of things like heart attacks. For such a big factor, it is widely unmanaged. There are many tips and articles on the web for managing stress, but often the only guaranteed solution is to remove people or situations from life completely. For some, this is not an option.They have to continue doing to work, interacting with stressful people, and generally living their life. How can we manage stress and overcome it without having to be put on bedrest, or otherwise shut down life? Sharecare, a “health and wellness engagement platform” has invested in technology that might begin this process.
The issue is that often people do not realize the level of their stress until it becomes a serious health risk. Because we operate every day overcoming certain amounts of stress, like traffic, or an difficult co-worker, we become used to feeling stressed. Some become very good at living with stress and overcoming it. Yet it continues to build, and eventually they are putting themselves in situations where the stress has escalated to dangerous heights. Similar to the way lobsters are boiled, people can find themselves in scaldingly stressful situations without even realizing it.
This is where Sharecare’s new app can help. They, with newly acquired German technology magnate Feingold, have developed an app that analyzes human behavior and offers a comprehensive health profile. They describe the app as being able to listen to the human voice and then offer a diagnoses of the patient’s mood and stress levels. The app collates data from every call the patient makes, providing charts that explain which calls left the patient more stressed, and which contacts gave the patient which levels. The app sounds a little bit like a mood ring at this stage. Skepticism is a valid first reaction. But the vision that Sharecare co-founder Jeff Arnold outlines sounds legitimately promising. “As part of our strategy to create the comprehensive health profile for every consumer regardless of where they are on their health journey, it is critical we find new ways to help people be mindful of their health every day without disrupting their daily routine,” mobihealthnews.com reports him saying.
This statement could be a motto for all mHealth development. The idea of being able to non-invasively provide health assistance to patients is one of the foundations of mHealth, and to have major players like Arnold and Sharecare pursuing this goal is exciting. If Sharecare’s app, which is in trials right now, pans out to be an effective stress management tool that will be a major advancement and effective help for all smartphone owners. But even if the app does not end up working correctly, we still have the idea permeating the app market. Stress relief and management, because of its intricate and powerful nature, will probably only be achieved by means of non-invasive mHealth solutions. We now have those solutions in development.