Employers nationwide are lowering health insurance benefits to cut premium costs, but why not instead harness health IT with an online diet and exercise program to persuade your employees to lead more healthy lifestyles? Can such employer-sponsored online behavior modification programs really cut health care costs?

To answer the question of whether employer-sponsored online health IT can lower the health-benefit costs to employers, Boston University researchers designed the "Dash for Health" program�an online nutrition and exercise behavior-modification program. Created by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), Dash is currently being offered as a free, voluntary benefit to employees at the EMC, Boston Medical Center, CVS/Caremark and some employees at Partners Healthcare.

As the cost of health insurance premiums continues to rise faster than inflation, employers are increasingly looking for smarter ways to decrease the burden of health care costs instead of just cutting benefits. Smarter alternatives like Dash for Health offer low-cost online resources that can encourage healthful lifestyles with voluntary behavior modification�basically Websites that encourage exercise, proper diet and preventative measures like regular checkups and adherence to treatment regimes.

Dash for Health encourages employees to log in at least once a week to report on their healthful activities and receive advice on how to improve their nutrition and exercise habits. By entering their blood pressure, weight and other relevant medical data, the Website personalizes its nutrition and exercise advice. Detailed progress reports also encourage employees to gradually change their habits for the better, inducing gradually improving healthful benefits over the long term.

A study to measure the short-term health care cost benefits of Dash for Health, recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a profound benefit to those at risk for higher-than-normal health benefit costs. Employees at risk for cardiovascular conditions, in particular, were found to lower their health care costs every time they signed onto the Dash for Health Website.

The yearlong study results of the benefits of Dash for Health focused on the efforts of 735 employees with cardiovascular conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. The results showed that employees saved their employers an average of $55 in health care costs every time they signed onto the Website. Over the year, the cardiovascular risk group reaped an average savings of $827 on their health care costs.

A previous study found that even employees without high-risk conditions benefited from Dash for Health by losing weight, lowering their blood pressure and improving their eating habits. Studies ranging over several years would have to be performed to measure how much a healthier lifestyle lowers long-term health care costs, but no health care cost savings was detected in the low-risk employee group for this short-term one-year study.