VLM was developed with the health system, physician, coach and patient in mind. From the health system’s opportunity to provide care to more patients, to the physician’s ability to quickly view summary progress, to the coach’s ability to connect daily with patients, to the patient’s receiving 24/7 support in their weight loss efforts, VLM provides numerous visible benefits for all participants and improves patient health.

While extremely effective in helping overweight and sedentary adults lose weight and improve health outcomes, the Diabetes Prevention Program protocol is expensive and time-intensive. Thus, simply deploying the Diabetes Prevention Program  lifestyle intervention is challenging creating the need for a solution like VLM to help the large number of individuals who desperately need a healthy behavior change intervention that improves patient health.

To address this concern, the University of Pittsburgh selected DPS Health as its partner to develop VLM. A 2009 study published by the research team at the University of Pittsburgh found that VLM led to clinically significant weight loss.

A study, conducted by the university showed that “it is feasible to use Internet technology for translating a well-validated lifestyle intervention into clinical practice, and that online interactive behavior change technology may help overcome clinical barriers to the delivery of improved clinical preventive care. Although future studies are needed to confirm our preliminary data about weight-loss effectiveness, our study suggests that Internet-based programs may be helpful for improving the delivery of preventive medicine counseling in the primary care setting."  (McTigue, et. al. “Using the Internet to Translate an Evidence-Based Lifestyle Intervention into Practice” Telemedicine and e-Health Vol 15 No. 9, Nov 2009)

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