With COVID-19 affecting virtually every aspect of human life — from our lifestyles, to consumer behaviours, to labour practices — it is easy to overlook exactly how people are mentally coping given everything that is going on.
The World Health Organization (WHO) explained that because of the significant changes to our daily lives caused by stricter movement regulations being imposed by governments around the world on top of our individual fears of contracting the virus, it is perfectly normal to experience bouts of stress and anxiety during today’s precarious times.
This, however, isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. While the pandemic has amplified such experiences, many people have had to deal with different forms of stress long before COVID-19. In fact, one of the most pertinent forms of stress is the kind that is experienced at work. This is merely magnified by work-from-home arrangement that is now highly encouraged by many offices where people are unable to compartmentalise domestic leisure from the stresses of work.
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Another WHO study noted that a healthy working environment is one that does not only reject harmful conditions but also promotes complete physical, mental, and social well-being among employees.
It is through this lens that Dr. Ian Ng, Founder and CEO of VITA, decided to come up with a mobile personal health record which provides detailed health information and insights with easy to understand visualisation tools that will help assess mental health through people’s biological stress scores combined with psychological assessment tools.
Empowering employees’ overall well-being
Based in Malaysia, VITA by Zing Healthcare provides tech-enabled tools to monitor and measure health data at the workplace and offer insights into personal and corporate health data to keep track of health policies and assist in formulating a customised health programme.
At its core, VITA’s unique technology provides more insight into the unknown and undocumented world of stress at the workplace.
“There are numerous studies linking stress to breakdowns in physical health but it is still mostly vague associations. We want to gather as much data as possible to understand all the elements which make up work stress and how it positively and negatively affects the human body,” explained Ng, emphasising that his profession as an occupational health doctor is the driving factor to why he created this tool.
He added, “[I want to] help organisations understand more about the stresses afflicting their employees and how to start improving work conditions using data-driven insights.”
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When under a lot of stress, some people may find it hard to concentrate, make decisions, and feel confident about their performance at work. As the age-old saying goes, “happy people are productive people” — meaning, work-related stress isn’t only detrimental to the overall well-being of an employee, but it also affects a company’s performance.
It is thus of paramount importance that companies put a premium on this aspect of work culture: by addressing problems in employees’ well-being using data-driven solutions that seek to accommodate the best interest of all stakeholders, companies stand to gain not only a happier and healthier workforce, but also a productive one.
Technology to address human needs
“Healthcare definitely has yet to see rapid digitalisation advances as it is highly regulated and customised to every healthcare system. In order for effective uptake by the end consumers, all healthcare providers need to adopt and also benefit from digitalisation of healthcare data,” Ng argued, explaining the fundamental role of technology in how we can improve and develop healthcare frameworks that best address issues in the workplace.
Moreover, he explained that as we get more information about stress and physical health, we can make the associations required to create AI to predict disease patterns and provide early warning systems to help with the patient’s motivation and decision-making for their own future health.
“We as a company in the digital health space are ready to assimilate into and work together with current healthcare systems and create more value by making the data relevant to the consumer. It’s not just about benefiting the corporates by saving insurance premiums and increasing productivity, the final target audience who are the employees themselves have to benefit from living healthier and happier with better transparency of data,” Ng added.
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One particular challenge that VITA foresees is resistance from healthcare providers who have yet to digitise their business as well as hospitals and clinics who are reluctant to let the patient health information freely transfer from one institution to another.
The reason for this, Ng argued, is due to fear of losing their patients/customers to the competition. At the end of the day, the objective is to allow patients to take back control of their own health data as they are the ones who will ultimately determine the outcome of their own health.
A crucial thing to surmise given these challenges is that when it comes to matters of health and safety, healthcare providers must step aside and allow people to make the best decisions for their own well-being based on transparent information and data-driven solutions — something that VITA advocates for.
Moving forward, what’s next for VITA?
Down the road, VITA hopes to work with more corporate customers to unlock the hidden metrics of stress at various workplaces. They also seek to expand their business intelligence tool based on the feedback gained from their current pool of customers, especially in terms of stress and how it affects the workplace.
In order to address challenges with healthcare providers and hospitals being stingy with health-related information, Ng said, “we do not exclusively work with any single healthcare provider and remain agnostic as a platform to allow this exchange of information to take place. Anyone who wants to join is very welcome to work with us to facilitate this freedom of data exchange.”
VITA has also recently signed up for an e27 Pro membership, allowing them to access tools, actionable insights, and fundraising opportunities that can help them push their plans further.
Ng expressed, “e27 Pro has allowed us to connect with startups, media, and investors from beyond our own home country of Malaysia and keeps us connected to the greater ecosystem out there. Our end goal is also to be part of a larger ecosystem instead of just residing in our own country.”
This exciting new development enables VITA to explore scaling opportunities that will allow them to grow not just their company but also their capacity to help out more people in the region. “We managed to make more connections than any other equivalent programme in our own country. We also utilised the Zendesk promo to help us develop our product to have a better CRM system to serve our customers,” Ng continued.
With these new developments laying the groundwork for VITA’s future successes, there is no telling how far their team can go in building a better world for employees everywhere.
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