Palo Alto, California-based Kurbo Health, which is developing a mobile-enabled program aimed at preventing childhood obesity, announced that it plans to monetize the program as a subscription-based service that will help teach kids and their families to eat healthier. The company made the announcement at a recent TechCrunch event. The company has raised $1.8 million in seed funding to date from Signia Ventures, Data Collective, and other angel investors. Kurbo joined the Rock Health accelerator at the end of last year too.
Kurbo Health cofounder and CEO Joanna Strober started the company with Thea Runyan, a lead behavior coach at Stanford’s pediatric weight control program. According to a blog post, Strober describes the program as offering ”proven tracking methodologies and virtual coaching to help adolescents control their weight using their favorite tool — their cell phone”.
"There really aren't any good weight loss programs out there for kids other than ones that are run through hospital-based programs, but they are very expensive and very time-consuming," Strober said in a video on the company's website. "There are... great university-based programs that have been very effective in helping kids to lose weight. We wanted to replicate the best of those programs in an online-mobile system."
The Kurbo Health program is designed for users aged 8 to 18, but is intended to create a supportive environment at home so the entire family participates. The app offers a manual entry food tracker that assigns colors (red, yellow, and green) to different foods so that children understand at a basic level which foods are healthy and unhealthy. Kurbo also offers games, a section to view progress, and challenges. Users receive feedback and coaching via video and text alerts within the app based on the foods they track. The app also offers encouragement and recommendations.
Kurbo Health's onboarding program lasts 10 weeks before transitioning into a behavior maintenance program. Children and their families use the web portal and app to track their eating habits and also participate in weekly individual, online coaching sessions that last 10 minutes. The version of the program with live coaching costs $85 per month, the text message-based version costs $35 per month, and the program is free to use if no live coaches are involved. The company's coaches include teachers, parents, and fitness instructors who have past experience working with children.
During the program Kurbo Health encourages children to build their exercise up to an hour per day. The company says the total time commitment a child will spend using Kurbo each day will vary, but will be less than half an hour.
The program will launch direct to consumer this summer. By then pricing could change, according to the company. Because the program licenses some behavior change tactics from Stanford, the university receives a 1.5 percent licensing fee from the company.
Many other companies have developed digital health tools to help children stay fit and eat healthy from an early age.
New York City-based patient engagement company Kognito partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight (IHCW) last month to create an app that addresses childhood obesity, called Change Talk: Childhood Obesity. The app helps physicians practice talking to patients and their parents about childhood obesity using motivational interviewing, an evidence-based patient-focused technique meant to use motivation to change a patient’s behavior.
Zamzee, Sqord and GeoPalz all use activity trackers to encourage children to stay active. In Zamzee’s system, kids wear a Zamzee Activity Monitor, a plastic tracker with a customizable skin. The device tracks movement, not just steps, but intensity of activity too. GeoPalz provides a pedometer, worn on the hip or shoe and shaped like a lady bug or a soccer ball, and a web and mobile portal. With GeoPalz, kids can view their step count on the pedometer itself and manually enter that number into a website, which converts the steps into points they can use to buy goods selected and priced by their parents. The third company, Sqord, offers a wristworn tracker which syncs wirelessly, and the company is focused on the social aspect at the classroom or neighborhood level. Competition is the main motivator in Sqord’s platform, rather than rewards.
Digital health gaming has been the subject of at least one high profile study recently: A study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics lends even more weight to the theory that gaming techniques could be a good way to encourage children to stay active. The study found overweight and obese children lost weight and demonstrated a significant increase in physical activity after using a 16-week weight management program that incorporates active video gaming.
