IN A step to encourage people to be more pro-active about their health, Changi General Hospital (CGH) and Microsoft Singapore are introducing a new website with information and advice tailored for the individual.
Users will enter personal information, such as weight, height and blood pressure, and the site will compute the information and suggest personalised diet plans, recipes and exercise regimes.
A person can also update his food choices or exercise activities daily. The user can share the information with his family doctor and fitness trainers, so they can provide better all-round care for the person.
For example, a family doctor may use the information to better advise a patient on how to lose weight or to see which diets are working and which are not.
The $1-million portal, at www.CareSpaces.com, will be ready next June for pilot testing, and officially ready by the end next year. Microsoft is building the system and providing technical expertise, while CGH provides the medical expertise.
CGH chief executive T.K. Udairam said the site was not an 'online doctor', and that people who are sick should still seek treatment.
The site 'gives information in a format people in the street can understand', he said yesterday.
Better yet, said Microsoft Singapore managing director Barney Lau, it does not just 'catch people when they are not well, but catches them when they are well, and maintains that'.
Fitness instructor Wang Kee Leong, 28, thinks the site may be helpful in his job as 'it is always good to know your students' background'.
'It'll help me know whether or not to push them harder.'
Family doctor Leslie Tay, who runs his own practice in Tampines, said the service might not be attractive to people over 50, the group that is not so tech-savvy.
'If you target geriatrics, and geriatric-related problems, like diabetes, I don't think these people will log on and use the system,' he said.
But he thinks services and information about topics such as sports-related injuries, weight management and hypertension - topics younger people can identify with - will be popular.