Yes, let’s talk more about the combination of technology with the search for successful interventions to reduce childhood obesity. (Apparently, the notion of eliminating it altogether has come to seem like something from the land of fairy dust and unicorns.)
In the realm of pediatrics, as well as in other areas, the innovations of telemedicine, telehealth, and even telepsychiatry have steadily become more prominent.
Back in 2014, a platform called CloudVisit was created to organize the scheduling of video appointments among people in different locations: “health care providers, patients, and families at home and at local facilities.” A successful weight management program involves participation from a number of experts — not only pediatricians, but dietitians, movement specialists, psychologists, statisticians, and more. And it has been shown that personal interaction works wonders.
Reality intervenes
But for various reasons, families cannot continue to bring children to physical locations forever, and fate provides other barriers to the perpetuation of intense, frequent personal contact. Organizations that were formed to deal with childhood obesity run out of money. “Cost-effective” is a very important phrase. The eventual goal has to be finding ways to “easily transition patients from in-office care to long-term weight management success.” As proponents of telemedicine point out, it can make a significant difference to rural and other underserved populations.
As CloudVisit President and CEO Daniel Gilbert phrased it, “Continuous care is easier, completely private, and significantly more efficient for the providers and the patients. Online wellness programs can improve long-term compliance and help patients maintain weight management goals.” One crucial facet of doing things the electronic way is that the care providers have to figure out how to monitor and influence compliance in the home, without being intrusive or bossy to a degree that causes attrition.
BrainWeighve
Now, in the present day, to truly appreciate how far the concept of long-distance helping has advanced, check out the BrainWeighve App User Manual. Here is a brief excerpt explaining how it works:
The app helps you deal with both immediate and ongoing difficult life situations and resulting eating urges. You enter your difficult life situations in the app’s Dread List, which helps you identify these situations, and then the app helps you to create Action Plans for each one.
This should stop the build-up of overflow nervous energy in your brain, and the displacement mechanism, which causes you to overeat, likewise should stop firing. For in-the-moment, immediate stressful situations with eating urges, you should tap the Rescue button. The Rescue area asks you what is bothering you the most in your life, at that moment, and then helps you come up with an Action Plan.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Pediatric Telemedicine Discusses Overcoming Childhood Obesity,” BroadwayWorld.com, 04/03/14
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