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CNCK Family of Database-Driven Mobile Apps Help Food Allergy, Diabetic, Vegan and Other Consumer Groups Shop
Publicly available data compiled by FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education) indicates that upwards of 15 million Americans suffer from some form of food allergy, many of whom are at risk from potentially going into life-threatening anaphylactic shock as a result of consuming the wrong thing. In an interview this May, director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research at Stanford University, Dr. Kari Nadeau, stated that the number of Americans suffering from food allergies was likely much higher, suggesting that the U.S. now has close to around 18 million people who suffer from food allergies of some kind.
The same is true across the pond in Europe, where a similar incident rate figure compounds an alarming rise in hospitalizations among children due to severe food reactions, the number of which has jumped seven-fold in the past decade according to the EAACI (European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology). The same kind of rise in incident rates among kids is occurring in the U.S., where during 2013 alone CDC data indicated that from the period between 1997 and 2011 food allergies in children increased as much as 50 percent. Also in 2013, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) put the total annual food allergy-related healthcare cost per child at around $4,184, giving us a $24.8 billion figure nationwide, on an incident rate of one in every thirteen kids.
Needless to say, for millions of Americans, grocery shopping can be like walking through an allergen-containing product minefield. That is why mobile app developer, ContentChecked Holdings, Inc., has created its family of powerful shopping aides, including its eponymous flagship app, ContentChecked. The ContentChecked app is driven by a robust, constantly growing database of high-fidelity product data, covering 70 percent or more of all conventional U.S. products. A database full of rigorously analyzed food manufacturer data, vetted by a dedicated team of nutritional experts, and backed up by algorithmically-driven, on-the-fly dietary needs solutions that are tailored to the individual user. However, the most compelling aspect of this app might be the tight feedback loop with the user base itself, in that it allows for direct user-submitted product reviews to be performed and those entries added to the database. This feedback loop enables the database to grow organically, yet retain the rigorous standards of administration by top experts in nutrition.
Along the same lines as ContentChecked, CNCK has developed similar apps, customized to meet niche and not-so-niche market demographics. With apps like MigraineChecked and VeganChecked (slated for late 2015), as well as SugarChecked, an app to help what was roughly half the population in just 2012 that is either diabetic or prediabetic (National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2014), CNCK is at the forefront of a user-driven revolution in retail, powered by the rise of m-commerce. Given that diabetes alone is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S., the idea of a simple to use, intuitive and intelligent app, which was designed to help users quickly avoid products that contain high levels of refined sugars, is a real life saver in today’s increasingly hectic, mobile-centric world. The global smartphone market saw 11.6 year-over-year growth for second quarter 2015 in terms of units shipped, with 337.2 million smartphones hitting the streets, the second highest quarterly total on record according to IDC’s (International Data Corporation) July report. Putting the power in the hands of busy shoppers to quickly and easily check products against a database they can trust, is the kind of thing whose advent can potentially make huge waves in the retail space.
One of the best usability features of these apps is that anyone can use them, and thus shop for friends or loved ones that have food allergies with considerable ease. The time and effort saved by being able to simply have your smartphone signed in to the app with a user, or group of user’s allergies set, and then briefly point the camera at the barcode on a given product in order to trigger an automatic information page showing whether or not the product’s content is safe, changes everything when it comes to shopping for people with food allergies. That same information page which shows what allergens are present or not, allows users to also rate the product, or quickly browse a list of similar, alternative products that do not contain allergens.
This is also a superb way for manufacturers to showcase their products to what is an obviously growing demographic of people with food allergies, especially when you consider that 65 percent of children born to parents with food allergies will themselves inherit those same allergies. Seems like a pretty safe bet that demand for these apps won’t be going anywhere for the foreseeable future, and as more adults and kids develop food allergies, diabetes, migraines, or simply want to find organic vegan produce, the overall utility of and user base for such apps will only increase. These are just the first fruits from CNCK as well, and the company is dedicated to providing similarly unique, helpful mobile experiences that cater to other target markets, and which are amenable to the application of this same vetted product database technology.
The company has the vision to work at establishing itself long-term as the trusted go-to source for consumers or food buyers who are looking to maintain a clean and healthy product supply, leveraging a technology and approach that applies equally well to eating categories such as veganism, kosher or non-GMO, as it does to the task of seamlessly filtering allergen-containing foods, or those high in refined sugars. Providing user-customized search capability that extends to the brick and mortar product isle via mobile is an excellent business strategy for CNCK, and as it becomes clearer and clearer to manufacturers and advertisers that consumer-driven search fidelity is the supercharger of commerce, the search platform itself stands to become the billboard, with many of the associated benefits accruing to CNCK.
To take a closer look, visit www.contentchecked.com
