Seoul's smart watch healthcare program expands to 220,000 citizens

Reward points offer strong motivation to participants: city gov't

By Ko Dong-hwan

The Seoul city government on Monday began pooling participants for a smart watch-based healthcare monitoring service. This year, the city aims to enroll 220,000 participants, making it the largest group since the program's inception.

Once the first 150,000 participants are confirmed on a first-come, first-serve basis, free smartwatches will be shipped to 100,000 of them and the remaining 50,000 participants will use smartwatches they already own, compatible models being either a Galaxy Watch or Apple Watch. The selection will be based on the city authority's assessment of online registrations submitted via Onhealth.seoul.go.kr.

Anyone who received the watch or had their membership activated with their own watches within two weeks after their registration was assessed can initiate the program by installing an app that can be tethered to their watches. The devices can read a wearers' pulse, body temperature and other detectable physical signs that can be translated into precise figures.

Dubbed “Smart Doctor 9988,” the program encourages participants to adapt healthy daily routines including taking 8,000 steps each day and eating healthy dietary plans. The devices can read the number of steps taken automatically, while users can record what they ate on the app. After registering the records, the app rewards virtual points to the participants. Completion of the daily walking routine will give 200 points upon each walk. Do it for three days or more a week and 500 bonus points are rewarded.

Under the reward system, one can collect up to 100,000 points in six months, according to the city authority. The collected points can be used as cash (with 1 point equivalent to 1 won) in the city's 70,000 stores, from hospitals to pharmacies and convenience stores, where they accept Seoul Pay, a smartphone-based payment portal launched by the city government to support local small-to-medium-size shop operators.

Those aged between 19 and 75 are eligible for Smart Doctor 9988. The Smart Health Division under the city government's Citizens' Health Bureau, which launched the program, expects to see increased participation from senior citizens and other groups for whom the program was developed. The authority ran a special promotion at the city's local health clinics to grab the attention of women who recently gave birth, those with metabolic syndrome, those aged 60 or older, those in poverty and living alone and young adults in mental and physical isolation.

Park Yu-mi, chief of the Citizens' Health Bureau, said that the authority will seek an additional 70,000 participants at the end of this year so that as many as 220,000 can receive Smart Doctor 9988's virtual checkup this year. She said the latest annual program has increased the age cap for participants from 69 to 75 to attract more people from senior age groups.

The city government started the online health monitoring program in December 2021, running it for a year with 50,000 participants. Almost 97 percent of them completed their programs and over 64 percent of the participants consistently fed their watches with activity-triggered data at least once a week throughout the program duration.

The second run, from December 2022 to September this year, was joined by 180,000. The authority said almost 85 percent of the overall participants from the first and second sessions said the program helped them improve their healthy lifestyles. More than 45 percent said they started taking more number of daily steps than before, while more than 12 percent of those who had joined the program with obesity said they lost some weight.