Patent ID: 7412511

Claim:
A method of providing wellness-related services, including at least one of wellness, health, or fitness services through a publicly accessible distributed network to authorized users using authorized portals, comprising: providing an online site that enables wellness-related databases to be accessed from at least one of a sponsored and a non-sponsored portal; placing in communication at least one of a sponsored and non-sponsored portal to the online site through the publicly accessible distributed network wherein the publicly accessible distributed network includes the Internet, wherein the sponsored portal is at least in part sponsored by and located at, a fitness center, and wherein at least one of the non-sponsored portals accesses the on-line site through the Internet; receiving a request at the online site requesting access to the wellness-related database; processing the request at the online site to determine whether the portal was sponsored and whether the request was received from an authorized user; responding to the request based in part on whether the portal was sponsored and whether the user is authorized; wherein the method further comprises obtaining fitness-related data from the user through the sponsored portal at the fitness center, entering the fitness data for the user into the database, and providing access to the user to the fitness data through the non-sponsored portal through the Internet; further comprising automatically assigning the user to a control group based on user attributes.