MyFitnessPal acquires online coaching startup
A free health and fitness data platform, MyFitnessPal may be adding new a feature after the San Francisco-based company acquired fitness coaching startup Sessions. MyFitnessPal already boasts 50 million users.
Sessions premiered four months ago and pairs users with coaches, helping them develop weekly exercise regimens and otherwise improve fitness levels. Users and coaches communicate through email, phone calls and texting, and coaches can track user activity via apps and devices such as RunKeeper and Fitbit. Programs run for 12 weeks and vary in price according to intensity level.
It is not yet known how MyFitnessPal will integrate Sessions into its offer.
In June of 2013 Sessions worked with the Mayo Clinic to perform an 80-person randomized trial of its program, which tracked biometrics such as blood pressure and quality of life.
"We started Sessions because we wanted to develop these prescriptions for lifestyle diseases," Sessions CEO Nick Crocker told MobiHealthNews at the time of the trial. "We are also trying to deliver these programs with a level of confidence and proven efficacy that doctors will be comfortable with."
Crocker also notes that collecting such data is merely the first step regarding digital health and fitness.
"I think the next phase for people to ask ‘what is the most effective way to interpret and use this data?'" Crocker told MobiHealthNews. "It's going to start to get really interesting when these tools will augment the next phase of the cycle, which I think is going to be all about effective interventions."
Among the many devices and services MyFitnessPal integrates with are gym equipment, trackers by Fitbit, Jawbone and Withings and a host of apps.
