System and method for promoting and tracking physical activity among a participating group of individuals

Abstract

A system and method of tracking physical activity of a person in order to help motivate that person to add more exercise to his / her life. Each participant is provided a motion sensor that detects forces incurred by the participant. The motion sensor creates electronic data that corresponds to the forces detected. The data is analyzed to determine whether or not exercise has been performed. The analysis can also determine the type of exercise performed, when the exercise was performed, and the duration of the exercise performed.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 594,611, filed Feb. 3, 2012, entitled System and Method For Promoting and Tracking Physical Activity Among a Participating Group of Individuals, the entirety of which is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]In general, the present invention relates to systems and methods that are used to track the health and wellbeing of people within a targeted group. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods that utilize interactive software to both promote and track physical activity among participants in the targeted group.[0004]2. Description of the Background[0005]It is a well-established fact that people generally live longer, healthier lives if they get regular physical activity. It is also a well-established fact that people are more likely to start a...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]The exercise of each participant can be converted into a preselected caloric expenditure unit or equivalent steps for a specific type of exercise. In this manner, the exercise types of all participants can be accurately compared and applied to common exercise goals or exercise competitions. If an exercise goal is achieved, participants are rewarded with reward points in an amount proportionate to difficulties in achieving the exercise goal. The reward points can be used as payment for selected goods and services that promote a healthy lifestyle.

[0016]The system may additionally allow an administrator to take a file that has a multitude of groupings for each participant(s), and to turn those common groupings into teams. Those teams can then be entered into exercise competitions in which the winning team members are rewarded for their collective or respective individual achievement. In this way, members of a team may be motivated to encourage each other to be more physically active and to thereby achieve a healthier lifestyle.

[0017]Thus, the present invention provides: an exercise system that both passively and accurately monitors the amount of exercise performed by an individual, thereby reducing cheating and user fatigue; an exercise system where all exercises are automatically reduced to comparable units, thereby enabling all exercises to be compared for use in challenges and competitions; an exercise system whereby data collected automatically and passively offloads to a central database, thereby eliminating the need for active intervention by the individual to participate in the program; and a system and method to allow an administrator to easily set up challenges and competitions between varying sizes and numbers of groups.

Problems solved by technology

Difficulties develop, however, when the management of a company tries to develop exercise programs for their employees.

The problem is that many people are not yet behaviorally ready to “exercise” and that not all of those who are enjoy the same types of exercise.

The problem associated with such prior art exercise monitoring software systems is that the systems require that an individual manually input data into a computer to inform the computer of what exercise has been performed.

Furthermore, people quickly grow tired of tasks in which they are not interested.

Employees that must voluntarily enter and log their daily exercise routines may quickly develop user fatigue.

Employees may forget to enter data daily and when they do enter data, that data may contain guesses and inaccurate remembrances of days past.

The problem associated with this type of connection is that it often is inconvenient or cumbersome for the individual to gain access to the computer and as such the participation levels drop off quickly.

Another problem associated with such prior art exercise systems is that it is difficult for an employee to equate different exercises with one another.

This difficultly in equating exercises makes it very difficult to establish goals for rewards.

It also makes it very difficult to set up challenges and competitions among participants that would promote further exercise.

However, when working with an organization that has thousands of employees and hundreds of different groups, it has historically been very difficult for an administrator to easily turn those groups into competitive fitness teams, and / or to create challenges between and among such groups and / or teams.

This has significantly limited the ability of organizations to leverage the natural social support network of departments, internal work groups, project colleagues, and / or geographic locations into a healthier organizational culture.

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