A new wellness app for dietary supplements could help you track your own compliance to your programme and remind you when it’s time to repurchase. This is according to Medicus Research, which is rolling out its software engine from clinical trials into the hands of manufacturers, distributors and retailers, so that they can customise the app and pass it on to purchasers of their supplements.
The contract research organisation (CRO) is based in California, translate expertise from clinical trials and software development to offer branded wellness apps. Medicus Research says that their new app is unlike any other health or wellness app, as it is based on structure function claims, demonstrating scientifically-based, individualised, real-life products. According to Medicus Research CEO Dr Jay Udani, who created Wellness Apps, ‘This is translational wellness. The app can send reminders to take the supplement, and it engages the customer with individual brands. This plays into the repurchase decision for the brand.’
When you download the app, it will send you a daily alert to remind you to take your supplement, and ask you to answer a few simple questions about the usefulness of the product. Dr Udani explained, ‘We designed the apps to engage purchasers of dietary supplements by giving them an easy way to record structure/function wellness data on a daily basis and demonstrating for them the efficacy of the product through visual graphics.’
He continued that the reason the app has been designed this way is because it ‘promotes daily engagement with the company’s brand, compliance with the product, and drives repurchase behaviour using the same underlying mobile technologies that we developed and have used for years in our clinical trials.’ However, he added, the app is designed along behavioural pathways because ‘If it is too complicated or against their normal behaviour then consumers will not use it.’
Dr Udani confirmed that ‘several interested parties’ are gunning for the app, which not only encourages you to comply with and buy certain brands of products, but also can be customised to bombard you with company news and announcements, special promotions, coupons and more. So, when you look at the mechanisms and motivations behind it, is this app designed with your wellbeing, or your wallet, in mind?
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