Getting started with HealthVault: Bing Health & Fitness App

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Every day there seems to be a new diet or exercise regime promising brilliant results -- but where do you start? How do you keep track of your progress? And most importantly, how can you tell which programs really work for you?

Interest in personal health and fitness is on the rise. This may be because of schools’ efforts to encourage children to adopt a healthy lifestyle from an early age. Health regime endorsements by celebrities could be a factor. Or maybe the recent boom in health and exercise gadgets is driving the trend. No matter what the reason is, it’s clear we’re living in a golden age of health and fitness.

After reading a recent post on the benefits of HealthVault, I decided to create an account and see first-hand how it works and get my own well-being on track. I wanted to start by checking out the new Bing Health & Fitness app to see how it works with HealthVault.

The app boasts a variety of features, such as access to health articles and tools allowing you to easily track your daily nutritional intake. Some of the quick access features include:

  • Diet tracker (calorie counting, calorie limits, calorie breakdown, analysis)
  • Exercise tracker (featuring exercise videos that target specific muscle groups)
  • Health tracker (including symptoms search and condition management)

Bing Health & Fitness also provides up-to-date and in-depth information on diets and fitness regimes. I was able to easily locate a well-organised list of diets, such as the Atkins diet, the Keto diet and the Hollywood diet. The app gave a short description of each diet, as well as information about its origins and precautions to bear in mind when on the diet.

Another feature I found very interesting was the built-in symptom checker. This feature allows you to potentially self-diagnosis a condition by selecting the symptoms you’re experiencing. Then the app conveniently pulls up an overview of the condition, along with potential causes and treatment options.

Bing Health & Fitness syncs your data directly to Microsoft HealthVault, making it easy to look at it in context, alongside your other health data. This sync feature makes it easy to keep your HealthVault profile up to date.

I found the app was very intuitively designed and easy to pick up. Both services have something to offer everyone, either as an informational resource or as a complete nutrition management tool.

Learn more about Bing Health & Fitness and HealthVault.