Q1. What made you decide to introduce Bodygram?

Kao originally marketed a food for specified health use called Healthya Green Tea that helps reduce visceral fat.

Visceral fat is fat that is generally said to have a negative impact on health, but unlike subcutaneous fat, it is invisible to the eye. Therefore, even though Healthya Green Tea proposed a product to help reduce visceral fat, it was difficult for consumers to feel the effects.

So I wanted to propose a service that would allow people to visualize their health status while continuing to drink and to feel the effects that are hard to see. Kao’s R&D department had developed an algorithm to calculate visceral fat levels as a guide, based on the results of more than 10,000 measurements.

Thanks to the development of the visceral fat meter and the collection of more than 10,000 cases of data over the past 10 years, development had progressed to the point where visceral fat could be estimated as a rough guide if the five indicators of monitoring health (gender, age, height, weight, and abdominal circumference) were known, but there were issues in the areas of usability and user experience. Only the abdominal circumference needed to be measured with a measuring tape, and if they didn’t have a measuring tape on hand or if they felt it was too much trouble, they would not use the service.

When I was going through trial and error to find a solution to this problem, I came across a PR article about Bodygram and inquired about the possibility of easily checking visceral fat levels with just a smartphone.

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Q2. How do you feel about the introduction of the system? What are the advantages?

In addition to the fact that it is possible to check the level of visceral fat with just a smartphone without using a measuring tape, many people on social networking sites were surprised to find out the level of visceral fat just by taking two photos with their clothes on.

With Bodygram, even those who are not usually interested in health became interested in visceral fat after learning about the innovative technology and started to take healthy actions when the number was high. I think the merit of this project is that we were able to create a flow line that allows people with low health consciousness to become healthier.

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Q3. Episodes leading up to the introduction of the system, such as difficulties encountered

The most difficult part was the accuracy of the checks.

We were able to improve the accuracy by collecting additional data mainly from Bodygram.

Q3-2. How long did it take you to meet the accuracy standards after you decided to introduce the system?

It took us about six months to improve the accuracy and meet the standards.

(Bodygram employee) *Data collection is the most time-consuming part of AI learning, so it took a long time because of the strict evaluation, but thanks to Kao, we were able to collect data on people with high BMI values, which Bodygram did not have before, and improve the accuracy.

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Q4. How was the internal reputation of the project?

Since we have a large number of employees, we conducted the Monitoring Health Challenge not only for consumers but also for the company. Many of our employees were surprised to find out that they could estimate their abdominal circumference while wearing their clothes. Many of our employees are surprised to use the product. Those in the science field were especially interested in technology. It was well-received that there was little blurring when we checked the data continuously.

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Q5. Please tell us what you expect from Bodygram in the future.

This service has made it possible for people to easily grasp their health status.

If we can improve the accuracy of Bodygram, we will be able to offer health-related services to many people in cooperation with research institutes in the healthcare field. We at Healthya also hope that by improving the accuracy of Bodygram, we will be able to offer a wider range of services.