Leading a Healthy Life using the Balanced Scorecard Approach

Taking care of oneself does not seem to be a complicated task until one steps into this issue seriously

Looking at the sources of diseases, which can be as weird and unlikely as ‘severe allergy from a pet’s hair’ to something as sure as ‘suffering from a deadly mutation that sticks to the genes and is carried from generation to generation’, it seems a solution that holistically evaluates an individual on the ‘health grounds’ is a must. In this sense, a ‘personal health scorecard’ is what takes care of all these areas in a truly ‘effective’ and ‘measurable’ manner.

Some of the health-related ailments surface only after a lot of ‘irreparable damage’ has already occurred in the body. This makes ‘voluntary visits for medical check-up’ a ‘much-required ritual’. Moreover, the immensely large variety of Insurance and Medical Benefits Schemes offered by companies that promise to pay during tough times press upon a ‘well-aware’ individual to use a monitoring system for keeping a track on all these events.

Saying it all, it is like ‘assessing how well a person is concerned about his own well-being’. There are various aspects that need to be considered for this process. By putting useful and relevant metrics for each of these, the efforts being undertaken and the way they are paying can be known. This also makes possible the timely detection of the ‘suffering coming on the way’ possible; thereby pro-active measures can be used.

To start with, the metrics that can be of help are- Physical well-being Perspective, Daily Intake/ Food Chart Perspective, Body Composition and Environment Perspective and Progeny/Family History and Efforts Perspective. The metrics for gauging these aspects are- Number of physical injuries suffered, Average length of illness, Medical Check-ups Frequency and Number of Insurance Schemes for having ‘Physical well-being Perspective’; parameters like ‘BMI (Body Mass Index)’, ‘Dangerous Chemicals Exposure’, ‘Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis’ and ‘Body fat Percentage’ for having ‘Body Composition and

Environment Perspective’. Further, intake of Proteins, Vitamins, Minerals and Fat on daily basis can be used to have the overall ‘Daily Intake/ Food Chart Perspective’ and lastly, the ‘Progeny/Family History and Efforts Perspective’ can be attained via the metrics like ‘Number of hereditary diseases’, ‘Timely Detection Efforts’, ‘% Infliction rate’ and ‘'Lethal Cases' Ratio’.

Establishing in such a summed-up manner, the all ‘countable’ aspects of an individual’s health that ‘count’ produces double benefits; ensuring that the concerned individual leads a healthy life and that the generation-to-come too, faces less risk of being caught up in the ‘illness-cycles’.

However, several challenges are encountered on this path. The one that comes up most promptly is the ‘willingness of the person to take the trouble of framing and following the scorecard’. Further, these types of scorecards are ‘extremely’ and ‘understandably’ personalized in nature. Consequently, the concerned individual has to make significant contribution in terms of efforts to come up with a useful ‘set of metrics’.

Moving on, ‘revisits’ after fixed intervals is yet another requirement to extract the maximum from this ‘performance measurement and management tool’. In other words, the person is supposed to keep a track of the extent to which this paying-off. Capping it all, one can extend the usage of ‘balanced scorecard’ from organizational board-rooms to own health for gauging the physical and mental well-being.