11 Jun 2012 07:00
Fitbug Holdings Plc / Epic: FITB.L / Index: AIM / Sector: Leisure
11 June 2012
Fitbug Holdings Plc ('Fitbug' or 'the Company')
Launch of New Games Framework and iPhone App Attracting Strong Interest
Fitbug Holdings Plc, the AIM listed provider of online personal health and well-being services, announces that it has, through its subsidiary Fitbug Limited, launched an innovative new Games Framework and iPhone app to be offered as valuable product extensions to fitbug.com, allowing users to increase their exposure to the innovative Fitbug service.
Using Fitbug's established Connected Health platform, the new Games Framework allows teams or individuals to compete against each other to complete virtual challenges. This new capability, which encompasses Google map based progress and hotspot graphics, Chatterbox and Social Media features, as well as team leader boards, builds upon Fitbug's previous league challenge, Fantasy Footfall. These games can be customised to any route and branded to meet client requirements. The new Games Framework supports Fitbug's corporate sales strategy of encouraging employee health and wellbeing through enjoyable team work and interaction. Such schemes help employers benefit not only from a reduction in direct medical costs but also from the reduction in the hidden costs associated with absence, overtime and replacement workers.
The new games platform has been designed to enable Fitbug to provide a library of readily available challenges to clients and, where required, quickly build bespoke challenges for specific client engagements. Early market interest has been strong, with seven UK businesses covering 4,250 employees now running Fitbug challenges. These include two leading London legal firms and three NHS employers. In addition PruHealth, a longstanding Fitbug client, has piloted the new Games Challenge Framework with their own staff and are now employing a Beijing to London Challenge with their health insurance customers as part of their Vitality Programme engagement activities.
Additionally, Fitbug has launched its first iPhone app which allows Fitbug members to log physical activities and nutritional input, amend their goals and check their daily step progress with a new, easy-to-use mobile interface, thereby motivating users to track progress and encourage fitness dynamically and whilst on the go. The app is free and can be downloaded by Fitbug members from the App Store.
Fitbug Limited Chief Executive Paul Landau said "'Gamification', which is used in the US to describe the use of techniques borrowed from digital games to encourage regular exercise and foster healthy eating habits, is an area of strong market interest and growth. So too is the increasing use of mobile technology in health, particularly by those operating the most recent generation of smart phones. The launch of our latest games framework and our first mobile app significantly strengthens Fitbug in both these important areas and will enable us to build our momentum in this fast moving technology based market."
**ENDS**
For further information visit www.fitbugholdings.com or contact:
Paul Landau | Fitbug Holdings Plc | 020 7449 1000 |
Andrew Brummer | Fitbug Holdings Plc | 020 7449 1000 |
Mark Percy | Seymour Pierce | 020 7107 8000 |
Catherine Leftley | Seymour Pierce | 020 7107 8000 |
Katie Ratner | Seymour Pierce | 020 7107 8000 |
Isabel Crossley | St Brides Media & Finance Ltd | 020 7236 1177 |
Elisabeth Cowell | St Brides Media & Finance Ltd | 020 7236 1177 |
Notes
Fitbug is a leading provider of online health and well-being services to help individuals to improve their lifestyles by making realistic changes to their daily routine. It combines activity tracking devices, which download to fitbug.com to provide an understanding of each user's daily activity achievements, with web technology which provides users with personalised weekly activity and nutrition targets, feedback, advice and encouragement.
Key market sectors include health insurance and rewards providers, workplace health programmes, Primary Care Trusts, fitness operators and consumers. Increasingly, Fitbug's platform acts as the driving force behind third party services such as white label sites, activity driven games and challenge microsites and rewards programmes.
The Company's main focus is now on building strategic partnerships with organisations, with the United States as a key market, which can integrate Fitbug into their own service/product offerings or resell to their customer base. Visit www.fitbug.com for more information.