Garmin and Nan Shan Life Collaborate on Insurance App to Encourage Health Management for Disease Prevention

Taiwanese insurance company Nan Shan Life has teamed up with Garmin Health to offer insurance policyholders the BAM app¹, a health management application that combines AI technology with insurance products to encourage participants to pursue healthier lifestyles. This is a cross-sector collaboration between the insurance arena and Garmin, aiming to expand the value and impact of insurance, focusing on health promotion and management for prevention, rather than on payouts after an incident occurs. With this innovative approach, Nan Shan Life won this year’s Garmin Health Award in the insurance category.

Garmin Metrics Used for the BAM App

Users of the BAM app and a Garmin vívosmart® 4 fitness tracker (with future plans to incorporate vívosmart® 5) are able to monitor their health and lifestyle through aspects including:

• Exercise (number of steps)
• Active calories
• Sleep (hours of sleep)
• Resting heart rate²

The app collects these data points from the Garmin wearable device and combines them with some additional user data such as BMI and age to apply an innovative, exclusive biological age BAM algorithm to estimate the biological age of users. (Bio age is an assessment of a user’s physiological age, as opposed to their chronological age — derived from analysing and combining various studies on physical activity, fitness and estimated mortality/morbidity risk.) Each policyholder’s daily biological-age changes and trends are paired with insurance rewards to highlight the potential benefits of health management and biological age reduction. Policyholders who reach designated goals may enjoy higher coverage protection and other rewards. The social function of the BAM app also allows users to compete and participate in exercise challenges with friends, displaying progress through the dashboard. The newest feature, “Headsup,” even takes things a step further — a smart algorithm on the app uses a combination of physiological and lifestyle data to trigger an alert that the user might be feeling unwell from flu-like illness such as the common cold, flu, fever or COVID-19. This allows users to manage and improve their health.

The Future of Digital Health Management

With the COVID-19 pandemic prompting everyone to pay more attention to their physical and mental well-being, companies such as Nan Shan Life and Garmin are hoping to promote independent healthy living with an emphasis on personal health management using innovative digital health products and applications like this one. With superior Garmin products, reliable continuous data, social support and encouragement, users can see achievements that strengthen new habits and self-discipline in an increasingly remote world.

¹Available in Taiwan

²Garmin devices are not designed or intended to monitor or diagnose diseases or any medical conditions. Find information on metric accuracy here.