Increasingly, companies are investing in health and wellness. This comes not just as an additional employee benefit, but rather a strategic decision on the part of enterprises. A study by RAND reports the return on investment to be $1.50 for wellness programs. Logically it makes sense, healthier and happier employees are more productive and savings come in the form of lower absenteeism as well as chronic disease management and risk reduction.
With the advent of wearable technology there is potential to utilize these devices to augment wellness programs. However, last month an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) outlined why wearables were facilitators and not drivers of health behaviour change. “The notion is that by recording and reporting information about behaviors such as physical activity or sleep patterns, these devices can educate and motivate individuals toward better habits and better health.”
“The gap between recording information and changing behavior is substantial, however…” At Vivametrica we help to bridge that gap. Data collected from wearable devices must be presented back to users in a form that is usable and easy to understand. Our data science team has developed algorithms that provide solutions. By digesting and interpreting wearable sensor data we are able to predict individual and group risks for chronic diseases including: heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, lung disease and obesity.
Recently, we completed at functional activity assessment (FAA) pilot project for an employee assistance consulting firm. The firm wanted to enhance their consulting services with our innovative approach to predictive health analytics. At the conclusion of the assessment period, Vivametrica delivered an overview of the group’s overall wellness across multiple chronic disease factors and individual risk reports to each participant, providing the ability to work on specific health targets. This also produced a measurement tool to track longitudinal health change, and quantify effectiveness of enterprise health initiatives.
Vivametrica is able to provide enterprise health and wellness firms with data tools that will help their clients custom tailor employee benefits to better suit organizational needs. This use case is just one application of our technology. We are currently expanding our analytics offerings across multiple channels to produce added value to data sets from wearable devices and beyond.
