Journey Towards Good Health

‍

Malaysia has become the fattest nation in Asia, with 54% of its adult population considered overweight or obese. A quarter of them suffer from fatty liver which often goes undetected. 

There’s an urgent need to address this silent epidemic, particularly as Covid-19 is more likely to hospitalise and kill those who are obese. Such concerns prompted the setting up of SejutaKG, a community weight-loss tracking platform that aims to motivate Malaysians to collectively lose 1 million ('Sejuta') kg of excess fat, and more.

“We want to address Malaysia’s obesity problem with a whole-of-society approach, by mobilising the actors that can most help to solve it and empowering those who need to go on a journey to better health with personal data,”  SejutaKG Founder Gabriel Ng says.

To achieve this, the campaign has been working with Dataswyft to launch a decentralised data network for its users to track and share data and access services and products that can help them achieve their weight-loss or fitness goal without compromising their privacy.

How it works 

SejutaKG is at heart a community campaign, summed up in its tagline 'Get Lighter & Be Healthier'. But it is a campaign with a significant twist – it comes with a platform (the SejutaKG app) that enables individuals to track their weight and get access to health merchants and service providers. 

By incorporating a Data Passport within the app, it can create 'Data Passes' that individuals can activate. These Data Passes are descriptions of the individual’s verified information that is stored within their own Personal Data Account, such as being a verified weight-loss contestant for SejutaKG-sponsored prizes. 

The Data Passes are matched with offers from the app’s partners that provide products and services to help individuals on their weight-loss journey. The app user can view these offers, claim them from the app’s partners and (if necessary) transfer their Data Pass data to the partner by enabling the partner to receive it with a Merchant Data Terminal. 

SejutaKG’s use of Data Passports provides a level of transparency and measurability that can positively impact the campaign. As the Data Passes are based on verified data, the Data Passport can prevent fraudulent claims on the offers. The Data Passport also enables the collection and sharing of data on demand between partners in the community, from labs to clinics to gyms, without fear of falling afoul of data regulations. Finally, it also provides the campaign organisers verified information on how the campaign is doing in achieving its ultimate goal of helping Malaysians achieving better health. 

With the verified Data Passes available on the SejutaKG App, the app’s partners can easily join the campaign by signing up to Dataswyft’s Merchant Data Terminal, subscribe to SejutaKG’s network and  promote their services to SejutaKG’s user base with discounts and freebies from wellness services to diet and health food. Merchants can choose which Data Passes they wish to promote their services to better target audiences, even as the campaign engages with its participants to live healthier lives. 

"With the Data Passport, we now have a system to verify that a person is collectively contributing towards losing one million kilograms, and we reward them with offers from our partners," Gabriel says.

“Integrating a Data Passport enabled us to get an immediate double-sided network with partners that can easily sign up to promote their services, and we can curate these services for our users. It also made it possible for us to obtain revenues from the network to fund the initiative from Day 1, enabling it to be self-sustaining. Best of all, we do not need to spend thousands of dollars on technical and legal integration with our partners.”

Gabriel and Dataswyft Chief Strategy Officer Ben Forbes got together recently to discuss how SejutaKG is tackling Malaysia’s obesity crisis, and how the non-profit platform becomes a catalyst for mass coordination as it brings together communities to support individuals pursuing long-term health by using its Data Passport-enabled  app. 

Catch up on the conversation to find out how SejutaKG wants to galvanise ‘a million villages’ (In Malaysia’s national language, sejuta means a million and KG is an acronym for kampung or village) – the communities of family and friends who will cheer on those who are on their journey towards good health.

‍

‍

‍

Gabriel will also be presenting at the 5th Symposium on the Digital Person on March 1, where he'll speak about SejutaKG and how it's using its Digital Data Passports to keep its users mindful and motivated on their weight-loss journey.

‍

BOOK NOW for the Symposium

‍

The SejutaKG App is an example of how a consumer app can incorporate a Data Passport to create a double-sided network of partners to match their offers with the app’s consumer base as well as share data within the network, to coordinate the system to achieve a collective outcome; in this case, losing weight and reducing Malaysia’s obesity levels. 

Through its use of Dataswyft's decentralised data account infrastructure, SejutaKG sets an exemplar of how consumer campaigns should be run – in a manner that preserves the privacy of individuals’ personal data, but also achieving impact through the effective coordination of large-scale initiatives with common goals. 

If you’d like to effectively coordinate a community programme that’s enabled by better data, do get in touch to find out more.