ABSTRACT
Dr. Michael Zaroukian, an internist practicing in East Lansing, MI, has found an innovative way to use mobile health with a handful of his patients. The app is the “tipping point,” Dr. Zaroukian explained, the thing that gives patients a new sense of power, control, and allows them to connect their behaviors and activities—eating and exercise—with their weight loss progress. Dr. Zaroukian strikes a careful balance between using the social-media functions of the app to cheer patients on while using secure messaging functionality at the office for answering clinical questions or revealing protected health information. Although this is a small sample, it appears that logging and tracking information regularly is correlated with weight loss for his group of patients. The social support, nurturing, and accountability seems to help too, in the same way that Weight Watchers helps.
