Press Release: Noom Extends Its Diabetes Prevention Program to South Korea’s Single Payer Health Care System
NEW YORK, Feb. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Noom, Inc. announced today the successful application and initial results of its Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) with South Korea’s single payers health care system. Noom’s DPP was deployed with two regional public health centers, Suji gu and Kwangju-si, both supervised by South Korea’s Ministry of Health & Welfare. Participants who completed the 16-week program demonstrated improvements in fasting glucose, triglycerides, and blood pressure.
South Korea’s single payer system covers the entire population. The Ministry of Health & Welfare supervises 245 public health centers across the country to provide services such as health promotion, health screenings, disease management, and prevention.
The two health centers’ coaches used Noom’s platform with pre-diabetic patients to enhance quality of life and lower costs, by reducing diabetes risk and improving biometric values. Participants used the Korean version of Noom’s mobile platform, Noom, to track their physical activity, log their meals, receive ongoing support from their health coach and peer group, as well as read program-specific content.
The health centers performed initial and final blood testing for participants to measure outcomes. Mean fasting blood glucose levels improved from pre-diabetic levels (124.9 mg/dl) to healthy levels (91.1 mg/dl). Triglycerides levels and blood pressure also improved in participants.
“Peer reviewed research has already proven that Noom’s Diabetes Prevention Program delivers meaningful weight loss comparable to CDC findings and outcomes. The deployment with two Korean regional health centers has allowed us to further prove the program’s impact on improving fasting blood glucose and other cardiometabolic values,” said Noom’s Medical Director, Dr. Youngin Paul Kim, M.D. “I’m proud to announce that due to the remarkable success of these deployments, Noom has since expanded its Diabetes Prevention Program to four more public health centers.”
The British Medical Journal Open Diabetes Research & Care recently published a study about the efficacy of Noom’s Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP); it was the first-ever peer-reviewed study of a fully mobile DPP. The study found 64% of participants who completed Noom’s program lost over 5% of their body weight.
The multi-language capability of Noom’s platform expands beyond Korean to include Spanish, Japanese and German, in addition to English. Forty-five million users worldwide have already benefited from Noom’s behavior change programs.
“The growing prevalence of obesity-related conditions is a global problem. Noom’s collaboration with employers, health plans and health systems extends well beyond the American healthcare market,” said Saeju Jeong, Noom’s CEO and co-founder. “Our platform is uniquely positioned to address pre-chronic and chronic conditions such as obesity, pre-diabetes, diabetes, and hypertension in international markets throughout Asia, with structured condition-specific and culturally-adapted programs.”
About Noom, Inc.
Noom Inc., a leader in mobile health coaching, combines the power of technology with the empathy of real human coaches to deliver successful behavior change at scale. Noom’s direct-to-consumer weight loss and exercise tracking mobile applications have reached more than 45 million users worldwide. Leveraging the success of their ground-breaking health and fitness programs, Noom developed a behavior change platform to treat chronic and pre-chronic conditions, beginning with the CDC’s Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). On the first day the CDC began recognizing mobile and online DPP providers, Noom was there. Since then, Noom has expanded its curricula across the acuity spectrum and now features programs for pre-hypertension, hypertension and diabetes management in addition to its flagship weight loss and diabetes prevention programs. Noom has offices in New York City, Seoul and Tokyo.
