IF-STEI Students Develop Obesity Prevention App
Modern lifestyles are characterized by the development of more environmentally sensitive thinking and a better life. Campaigns promoting environmental friendliness and healthy lifestyles are an indication of this evolving societal mindset, particularly in developed and developing countries.
This phenomenon is also occurring in Indonesia, with the rise of organic and eco-friendly products, as well as various innovations in diet and exercise programs. One innovation that resonates with young people in general is innovations in diet and exercise programs.
Responding to this phenomenon, a group of students from Informatics Engineering ITB initiated a work from the idea of a healthy lifestyle and obesity prevention. The work called VoFuse was worked on by a team consisting of Samuel Cahyawijaya (Informatics Engineering 09), Alfian Ramadhan (Informatics Engineering 09), Hanifah Azhar (Informatics Engineering 09), and Muhammad Ridhwan Ramdhani (Information Technology Systems 09. Starting from the idea to create a sports feature by detecting hand movements, this team developed an application that has 3 main features, namely Nutritionist, Personal Trainer, and Motivator.
Throughout their journey, Samuel and his friends received support and assistance from various parties. Starting from friends in Informatics Engineering ITB to Biomedical ITB. Thanks to this support, the VoFuse application managed to win the Imagine Cup 2013 which took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. Imagine Cup is an annual competition held by Microsoft since 2003 and aims to find new breakthroughs to solve global problems in this world. This achievement is inseparable from the encouragement of their mentor, Puja Pramudya at the Imagine Cup event. Previously, this team had also won the WOWZAPP 2012 competition organized by Microsoft.
Exercising with a Personal Motivator
One of the advantages of the VoFuse app is its motivational feature. This motivational feature presents articles about health and also stimulates the brain to stay focused. This stimulus feature uses human voices at specific frequencies to condition the brain to stay focused on a goal or weight loss target.
In addition to the motivator feature, there are also Personal Trainer and Nutritionist features. The Personal Trainer feature functions to schedule exercise time, record exercise progress, and provide results from those exercises. Meanwhile, the Nutritionist feature will regulate the user's daily calorie intake. "Generally, existing works only monitor calorie intake or exercise alone. VoFuse combines these two features and adds a Motivator feature to it," said Samuel.
Another advantage of VoFuse is that the foods recorded in the app have been adapted to typical Indonesian menus, so users don't have to worry about guessing how many calories they consume each day. "We use food data that is very Indonesian, because it is issued by the Ministry of Health," explained Samuel.
After winning the Imagine Cup, Samuel and his friends received a lot of brilliant feedback from the judges and various parties. "We're overhauling the features on Vofuse into other applications that are currently still in development. Just wait for the release date," said Samuel when concluding the interview with the News Agency.