Melon app

The Melon app is a health and wellness app with a variety of programmes. The app is aimed at people who are feeling anxious or stressed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The app has the following main sections:

• Program, also called 'Living well program', which has 4 modules covering COVID-19-related anxiety, staying connected, making the most of self-isolation and looking after yourself and others. The modules cover standard psychological tools.
• Health journal in which you can record your sleep, activity and feelings. It integrates with multiple third-party wellness tools like Fitbit and Strava. 
• Community, which is a shared online community in which you can ask questions and share ideas and thoughts anonymously. 
• Resources has multiple videos, podcasts and articles on a range of wellbeing topics. 
• I need help has an emergency contact list and emergency exercises. 

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

For COVID-19:

Reviewer: Jeremy Steinberg, GP, FRNZCGP
Date of review: April 2020
Platform: Android and Apple
Version: 3.22.0
Comments: The Melon app is a very well fleshed out wellbeing app with a good community section, multimedia resources and other extras. The multiple active community support workers are a great resource to have in this app. The website advertises programmes for multiple long-term conditions such as diabetes and cancer. These were not available to Healthify for review, and only the free COVID-19 programme was reviewed. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to anyone struggling psychologically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Safety concerns: None.
New Zealand relevance: It is a New Zealand-based app.

User review

Reviewer: Member of the public, NZ
Date of review: June 2020 
Comments: Too many private identifying questions. Too long process to access non-private data. Lost interest before finished trying to sign up.