Holly Health: the go-to app for daily health and wellbeing coaching

The small habits approach involves making small but consistent changes to our daily behaviours. Holly Health supports individuals to prioritise, achieve, and sustain new healthy habits across a range of health and lifestyle areas, covering nutrition, relationship with food, sleep, mental wellbeing and movement

Most of our overall health is defined by the tiny actions we take throughout each day. Like what we eat and drink, when we go to bed, how long we sit down for, and how much exercise we get. Around 60% of our daily actions take place without us thinking (i.e. subconsciously). In order to improve our overall health over the long term, we need to address our subconscious habits.

However, many of us take an 'all at once' approach to health improvements, for example, going on a restrictive diet, or planning to go to the gym every day as a new years resolution. The problem with these intense approaches is they are rarely sustainable. Studies have shown again and again that the best way to make lasting changes to our health, is to make small, consistent changes, which can be kept up indefinitely. Holly Health makes this sustainable approach doable and way more fun!

The Holly Health product has been developed utilising an evidence based approach, including the analysis of hundreds of studies and reports into behaviour change for disease prevention and weight loss. We list here a couple of the most relevant reports used in our research:

‍Challenging assumptions in obesity research (British Medical Journal) - Addressing weight loss as a sole or most significant outcome is flawed in efforts to reduce ability. Instead, we should address wider determinants and outcomes of health and behaviours, such as quality of life, environment, relationships, mood.

‍Advancing our health, prevention in the 2020s (Gov.uk) - The need for personalised, remote care, for prevention of disease.

‍Dietary patterns in weight loss maintenance (Eur J Nutr 2017) - The importance of healthy eating habits, such as preparing fresh foods and using a slow eating rate, for long term weight loss maintenance.

‍Addressing Challenges in Promoting Healthy Lifestyles: The AI-Chatbot Approach (Ahmed Fadhil 2017) - The benefits of the conversational approach to lifestyle change, as well as the importance of sound reporting methodologies.

The Holly Health approach to behaviour change is based partly on a cognitive behavioural therapy approach called 'behavioural activation'. Behavioural activation is a type of therapeutic intervention (most often used to treat depression) that focuses on behavioural changes in a client's daily life. It encourages new behaviours which are enjoyable, motivational, and help the individual to make progress towards their longer term goals. Behavioural activation is practical, simple, and very adaptive, it can involve any behaviours, as long as they are positive and useful to the individual.

Other important components of the Holly Health approach stem from evidence-based psychological interventions like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mindfulness-Based Interventions.

The COM-B Model of behaviour change (Michie et al. 2011) describes the relationship between capability, opportunity, and motivation, and the requirement for all three to be in place in order for behaviour change to occur. Additionally, Holly Health also adopts the principle of 'hinging', encouraging customers to tag new habits onto actions they already complete each day (e.g. brushing your teeth), to make it easier to incorporate a new habit consistently.

We believe that weight alone is not a direct determinant of a person's health. Evidence suggests that it's the actions that we take everyday, rather than how much we weigh, that determines health and predicts how long (and how well) we live. Taking this into account, we support those who do want to lose weight sustainably, or who want to maintain a weight range in which they feel comfortable in, through a psychological approach to eating behaviour, movement and general health.

- We guide people towards improving their relationship with food, rather than restricting or controlling what or how much they eat.

- We provide useful information about nutrition and wider health behaviours so people find what works for them, rather than a 'one size fits all' approach.

- We encourage mindful and fun movement, rather than punitive exercise routines. Overall, we support a person's physical & mental health, through small everyday actions that translate into long-term behaviour change for health and wellbeing.

Holly Health supports adults in their journey towards disease prevention, through gradual lifestyle behaviour change. We take a holistic approach to improving health. Holly Health encourages:

- Healthier daily nutrition, including great variety of vegetables and whole foods
- Improved fitness, addressing cardiovascular and muscular fitness as well as mobility and flexibility
- Better mood and mental health, including relationship with food, movement, and those around you
- Deeper and longer sleep

You do need a smartphone to use the Holly Health service. It operates on both Android and iOS (iPhone). You also need a negligible amount of mobile data or wifi to access the service content.

The Holly Health product utilises conversational interfaces for onboarding as well as the ongoing service. This means that you will converse with the Holly Bird through a chat flow. Messages and replies are sent based on pre-programmed decisions, which have been designed by a team of psychologists, nutritionists and health instructors. Conversational interfaces are also known as chatbots

There are lots of features on the roadmap, and the Holly Health team is expanding to release them to the public, employees and patients as soon as possible. Some upcoming features include integrations with external health data, like from an Apple Watch, and community features so that you can work to achieve your goals together.

We are also developing artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to enhance personalisation and outcomes