Odum Ltd, based in Helsinki, Finland, has worked in preventive healthcare for decades digitalising and automating processes for healthcare service providers. Two years ago, they expanded from healthcare to HR (human resources) and management tools with AlvinOne, a mobile app that can predict and help prevent illnesses. The AlvinOne team shares a vision of empowering individuals to take charge of their own wellbeing.
On a mission to help people
Healthcare costs are rising globally and are at an unsustainable level in many western countries. Individuals, governments and businesses carry the financial burden. At the same time, employers have become more aware of the costs due to reduced productivity and the importance of employee wellbeing when measuring organizational performance. Employees coming to work while not healthy enough to fully perform is estimated to cost employers as much as illness-related absences.
We believe prevention is the best treatment and people should be in the centre of their own wellbeing,
says Johanna Varje, co-founder and COO at AlvinOne.
AlvinOne is a new solution for optimising employee performance through health. It uses machine learning technology developed together with VTT to predict future health risks, performs an electronic health exam and connects work communities with right services based on results. For HR and management, it provides real-time, anonymised analytics on employee wellbeing and potential risks.
New innovations with VTT
Odum’s aim was to make intelligent, preventive technology available for everyone in their everyday lives. They had a good foundation in existing, extensive screening data.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is our long-term, reliable scientific partner. We have had close cooperation for many years, AlvinOne being the latest joint development,
Varje describes.
VTT formed a research group of data analytics and machine learning experts. The goal was to analyse the screening data and to train classifiers to predict future absences with as few questions as possible. The algorithms implemented in the mobile app visualise and perform analysis on the collected data, and thereby predict risks for future absences.
The rich sample of observations from the Finnish working population is unique in its overall size, width and depth. It helps us find profiles, trends and correlations that over time enable personalised and personal interventions in the high-risk groups. The developed algorithm can be modified for different job profiles and absence patterns in different countries,
says Mark van Gils, head of the research team at VTT.
Well received in forward-looking companies
The choice to enter the B2B market and approach HR and management with AlvinOne wasn’t an obvious one at first, due to Odum’s history in healthcare. Businesses have an incentive to keep their employees healthy and they are agile with implementing new innovations. AlvinOne describes their customers as progressive and sustainable companies that value their employees.
One of the clients, Anneli Barsk, HR Business partner at IT services giant Tieto, says she sees great potential in AlvinOne.
At Tieto, we want to give our employees the tools to succeed and to be the best versions of themselves. AlvinOne also connects our employees with services we want to offer them and allows us to measure effectivity.
Scalability drives growth
Organisations around the world are increasingly aware of the benefit of having healthy, high-performing employees, and the field is expected to grow rapidly in the next few years. As HR leaders search for modern, cost-efficient and scalable solutions, AlvinOne ticks many of those boxes. Although connected services are often localised, AlvinOne creates a global indicator for measuring employee health and brings prevention to smartphones around the world.
It might sound odd, but with data and machine learning, we can actually make prevention and treatment more personal, while still creating a greater impact than with traditional technologies,
says Varje.
AlvinOne launched in April 2017 and has come far since then. A brand-new version with a new interface and features was published in May 2018, and the company has acquired clients in Finland and Sweden.
Germany is definitely an interesting market for us and we’re currently looking for pilot companies as well as distributors there. We’re also looking into North American and Asian markets,
says Jukka Suovanen, CEO and co-founder at AlvinOne.
With constantly rising healthcare costs in industrialised countries, AlvinOne as an easily scalable solution is looking at a lucrative future.
