ISPO Award Winner 2024: Goes Health App by Goes

The Goes Health App uniquely combines expertise in wilderness medicine, real-time safety insights, and advanced weather forecasting into a single, user-friendly platform that functions both online and offline, ensuring adventurers are prepared and equipped for any outdoor scenario.

The development of the Goes app involved collaboration with athletes and leading scientists, including wilderness medicine experts from Stanford University and the National Park Service. This collaboration aims to ensure that the content of the Health App is not only practical and scientifically validated but also tailored to meet the real challenges of outdoor activities.

The young company feels affirmed in its journey by winning the ISPO Award. "Winning the ISPO Award underscores our mission to empower adventurers with the Goes Health App and make wilderness medicine widely accessible. It recognizes our innovative combination of expertise, design, and technology to transform outdoor readiness," says Camilo Barcenas, CEO, and Co-founder of Goes.

Goes provides users with a kind of pocket guide for significantly enhanced safety during their outdoor activities. Thus, the Health App is equipped with medical best practices to prevent outdoor injuries and illnesses and to provide immediate treatment in emergencies.

To provide the best possible support, an unique Wilderness Medicine Library, care protocols, and support systems are endorsed by the medical advisory board of Goes Health. This board consists of 27 emergency room physicians, all of whom are outstanding wilderness medicine experts from leading US medical programs.

Goes was originally developed to assist people in emergencies in remote or hard-to-reach areas. The app is designed to help where access to medical support or care is unreachable. "The app was designed to function in airplane mode to provide assistance in remote areas, conserving the phone's battery life," explains Barcenas. "Goes helps people become better prepared and more self-sufficient in managing their risks, thereby reducing the use of extensive human and energy resources required for search and rescue missions such as helicopter transport to emergency room visits.“

Only in the second step did the start-up discover the opportunity to open up to a much larger community. The Goes Health App is thus aimed at anyone who enjoys spending time outdoors. Whether trail runners, mountain bikers, hikers, or campers, including adventurous families with children, the app provides an intuitive solution for anyone needing help and appropriate guidance in emergency situations. The situations are largely tailored to outdoor activities.

Co-founder Barcenas also sees clear benefits for outdoor retailers: "By offering Goes as a resource and service, retailers can provide their teams or the community at large with a reassuring feeling and create a safer outdoor experience, whether as an employee benefit or more widely. They can also collaborate with us to support their business goals through additional resources on wilderness medicine with our medical advisory board."

The additional content such as weather forecasting, wilderness library, and instructions for emergency situations like lightning strikes, initial treatment of fractures, or snakebites are in English, making them easily understandable and applicable for German and European users as well. "As a digital application, each iteration, update, and expansion of the content in the app requires no additional printed materials," says Barcenas. Subscribers thus always have access to the latest wilderness medicine resources. "The uniqueness isn't in the weather component in itself, it's the translation of what to do with the weather event that they're experiencing", Barcenas adds.

Moreover, Goes is environmentally conscious. In partnership with the US-based environmental and outdoor movement Recreate Responsibly, Goes firmly believes in respecting and promoting the environment. The company is keen to educate on how to move respectfully and sustainably outdoors. "One should leave a place better than they found it," describes Barcenas the mindset.

• Interactive Health Assessment
• Expert-Designed Wilderness
• Medicine Content
• Action-Oriented Weather Forecasting & Location-Based Health Risks
• Reliable Offline Access