Holly Health Habit Coach app

The Holly Health Habit Coach app is designed to provide personalised digital health coaching for people who are wanting to turn health goals into sustainable actions. It focusses on four basic areas to work towards improving: physical activity, mental health, nutrition and sleep.

• The platform involves interaction with ‘Holly’ a digital bird, who is part coach (providing strategies to reach goals) and part cheerleader (providing encouragement and validation along the way).
• The initial steps involve a web-based behavioural check-up, which consists of several questions focusing on the four areas mentioned above. This is followed by a personalised habit set-up and then ongoing coaching to help maintain these habits via mobile app.
• You select a main goal from a list. Examples include 'I want to reach and sustain a healthy weight, I want to feel better mentally, I want to improve my sleep and energy levels.'
• You then complete a mini-health check which asks multi-choice questions about lifestyle – sleep, food, life satisfaction, exercise, stress, social interaction, goal setting, alcohol use, smoking, other health issues, medication. This takes around five minutes to complete.
• A visual graph then provides a health rating for the four areas of health and based on these results Holly suggests a few areas to work on. For example, Holly may suggest working on improving self-esteem and outline up to five ‘habits’ that you can select to work on. The recommendation is to start with two, but up to four can be selected.
• From there you set the goal level and frequency (eg, “write 3 things to express gratitude for, 4 times a week) and the time of day and frequency of the reminders. This can then be monitored and adjusted each week as progress is reviewed.
• The app is interactive and it's recommended to adjust goals as you progress. This reflects a behavioural experimental process, tailoring the habits towards best achievable outcomes.
• Other features include an ability to review progress, in-moment support, and suggestions to follow if you're struggling to action your habit. It also outlines extra challenges to engage in if you're making good progress and a further ‘discovery’ section where additional articles and videos relating to the four areas of health can be accessed.
• Research evidence (provided by the HHHC creators) suggests the programme is effective in that most users report an improvement in the habits they've set and been able to maintain these changes over time.

For the complete app description, go to the app website(external link), Google Play(external link), App Store(external link) or, for a more detailed review, see reviews below.

Clinical review

Reviewer: David Bloore, Clinical Psychologist, Private Practice
Date of review: November 2024
Platform: Android
Version: 1.53.1011
Comments: Overall, this is a simple and easy to navigate app, which provides practical steps towards improving health and well-being in several key areas. The tools and interventions are evidenced-based and the interactive process towards setting goals and reviewing these, is both engaging and reinforcing. The app guides you to create very practical goals and gives you the flexibility to set the parameters of these goals. The suggested interventions are realistic and achievable and the ability to adjust goals means they can be tailored to fit around different lifestyles. I see this app being a useful tool if you want to set health related goals and follow through on them. It's also a useful tool for health/mental health practitioners to recommend to clients and review progress with them.
Safety concerns: None.
New Zealand relevance: Yes. While this is an app that has been created with a UK audience in mind, I can see it being beneficial for a NZ audience. The core health strategies and habits recommended are relevant for improving overall health for a wide range of users. (Some of the wider features may not be available in NZ – such as information being sent through to GPs and recommendations for community health services.)