How Wellness Apps Can Help Women Become Proactive in Their Everyday Wellness Wellness apps distil information and provide it on tap so that women can find simple, effective solutions to stay fit

Ask any woman today and she will tell you that the most important issue for her to become fitter and healthier is not the lack of resources, but the lack of time.

Managing the day and figuring out a way to stay fit on a daily basis is not easy for anyone, but that is especially true for the women in India.

Dearth of Reliable Information on Health

Women have specific needs and deal with a lot more than men do in terms of health. From menstruation in their teens to eating disorders, anxiety, sex, and pregnancies, women deal with a lot more health issues up front.

Yet, there is a severe dearth of reliable information for women on their health issues. Most women seem to still do a Google search when it comes to their health care.

Women Shy to Speak About Problems

Another critical problem for a woman is being able to speak about the issues that they face. Girls are too scared to tell their mothers or their gynaecologists about certain issues. They may not trust their boyfriends or husbands for advice, and sometimes it is quite hard just to find a good doctor to go to. So where does a woman really go?

Her Phone

It is important for women to understand their body, mind, and emotions from a young age. Wellness apps focus on providing the right kind of information in a package that women can fit into their daily lives.

The apps can guide women from a young age of 15 to the age of 80, to keep her truly healthy. A holistic approach towards health (physical, mental, and emotional) always works.

That is the beauty of technology today. Being pro-active about wellness gives women the power to be in charge of their own health. They can do this by realizing the KAT principles –Knowing, Asking, and Tracking – seamlessly on their phones.

Knowing

Gone are the days when women used to tear out pages from a magazine's wellness section or use grandma's age-old recipes to cure ailments. Information today is available within minutes of unlocking our smartphones. However, abundance and clutter often lead to a quality vacuum, as women have trouble finding solutions that fit their needs.

For instance, a search for PCOS online would throw up information on the condition and science behind PCOS, which is good to know, but not really helpful on an everyday basis.

Women are looking for solutions, which they can implement in their day-to-day routines — appropriate diet, tailored fitness regimes, managing acne and hair growth, understanding hormonal changes due to medication among other things. Wellness apps are able to distil the information and provide it on tap, so women can find simple and effective on-the-go solutions to fit into their busy lifestyles.

Asking

The ability to ask, or connect with – an expert, a doctor, a friend, other women across India and the world — while yourself remaining anonymous, is something that could never have been done before.

Today, through an app, a woman anywhere can ask a gynaecologist for advice on how to deal with unwanted pregnancies or contraception, ask a nutrition expert on how to structure her diet, consult a sexologist privately about what works in the bedroom, ask other women how to deal with depression or ask patients their stories on PCOS or diabetes. The fundamentals of being pro-active require one to take an action.

And women have not been in a position to take these kinds of actions for a long time due to our societal structure and fear of being found out. A wellness app dedicated to women is such an important platform because it changes the way women perceive their health and puts them in the driver's seat, so they can make informed choices. It could literally change the fundamentals of women's health in India.

Tracking

Tracking is not just about controlling one's diet or tracking the number of steps they took in a day (although it's a start).

Wellness for women revolves around knowing if their periods are on time (since more than 40% of doctor diagnosis begins with questions around the regularity of their menstrual cycles), if they are taking the right multivitamins or supplements, if they have their medical records arranged for the doctors, maintaining a record of their baby's vaccinations or doctor appointments, keeping up with that 15-minute yoga routine to stay in shape, and many more things.

Tracking all of these was near impossible a couple of years ago, but apps on smartphones do make it possible for women to record, track, monitor and control exactly whatever they want to, whenever they want to. Tracking could also help doctors remotely monitor women's conditions and give them timely feedback, which again is a radical innovation and a complete shift in the way women have until now perceived healthcare.

When you combine the technology that is out there with specifically sourced data and real-time feedback from actual experts, it becomes revolutionary.

A great wellness app would help women become pro-active in achieving their goal of being truly healthy through the KAT principles.

It would encourage them to learn and know more about things that affect their body, mind, or emotions (women are known to be 16% more emotional than men).It would help them foster connections with like-minded women around the world and get the help (anonymously if they want) and support they need. It would help them track their information and get timely feedback so they don't regress in their condition. Most importantly, it would fit into their lifestyle and be completely personalized to them.