SUPERTECH SEEDS - BLOOMWISE
Case study with Bloomwise founders Paris Lalousis and Frankie Lewns.
Tackling the workplace mental health crisis with predictive AI
Poor mental health costs UK employers £56 billion each year. PhD graduate Dr Paris Lalousis and PhD student Frankie Lewns are actively working with businesses to help develop plans to mitigate the impact of poor mental health. Through the SuperTech Seeds programme the pair have now developed a first of its kind mental health app that will change the way in which businesses approach mental health in the workplace. SuperTech caught up with Paris and Frankie to find out more.
Tell us more about Bloomwise
Paris: Bloomwise is a mental health consultancy focused on promoting good mental health in the workplace through proactive solutions. We work with businesses to create mental health initiatives based on evidence-backed research in one of two ways:
Creating a mental health plan – This works similarly to a business plan, providing a framework for people to address and act upon mental health in the workplace.
Mental health workshops – We offer a series of mental health workshops that help leaders and employees deal with issues like stress in the workplace.
How has the SuperTech intervention supported you?
Paris: The involvement with SuperTech came at the perfect time. I recently completed my PhD research into the use of artificial intelligence to improve diagnostic and prognostic tools for clinicians and Frankie has a background in healthcare communications and is studying biomaterials and tissue engineering. We could both see the advantage of combining our expertise into an app to improve and build on the services we offer. In just four months we’ve created a fully functioning mental health app offering services that aren’t available anywhere else.
Tell us about the Bloomwise app
Frankie: The Bloomwise app helps businesses create a mental health plan, making it scalable so that employers and employees can deliver mental health initiatives in the workplace. It has a tracking functionality that allows organisations and individuals to gather key data on stress, mood, and workplace engagement to help inform and evaluate mental health interventions. Employees can track their own mental health and organisations can track trends at an individual or organisational level.
Paris: In the second stage of development, we’ll be incorporating artificial intelligence to create personalised recommendations for companies and employees, based on characteristics including sector, age, and gender.
What has it been like working with SuperTech?
Frankie: SuperTech has helped us in every way possible. We couldn’t fault the process. Support from the mentors Suzi and Hilary through to the technical development with Million Labs has been brilliant.
Paris: It has been amazing. Some of the other businesses on the programme had a web-based solution that they wanted to transfer into an app. We were starting with just an idea. To go from that to a fully functioning app that we can see and interact with in just four months is incredible.
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?
Paris: Go for it! Opportunities like this are extremely hard to come by. We’re very lucky to be here in the West Midlands and for there to be programmes like SuperTech available. Put yourself out there, it’s going to be worth it.
Frankie: Say yes to everything, take every opportunity.
What are your thoughts on no-code?
Paris: I hadn’t come across no-code before engaging with SuperTech. I do some coding through my PhD and research, so I have good technical grounding. Having gone through the process it’s clear to me that no-code makes creating an app a lot more accessible, less costly, and the functionality you can achieve is really impressive.
What is next for you and your business?
Frankie: We have existing clients from our other two offerings - the mental health plan and the workshops - who really want to try the app. We’ve spoken to Million Labs and have secured a quote for the next stage, which will be to develop the app into a Minimum Marketable Product (MMP). We want to do as much market research as possible, ahead of this and are conducting six demos with key organisations. It’s then about getting the investment that will allow us to further our traction and start implementing AI into the app.
For further details about Bloomwise and the Bloomwise app visit: www.bloomwiseltd.com.
To find out more about SuperTech and how to get involved in the SuperTech Seeds programme visit: www.supertechwm.com/seeds.