Irish tech start-up wants to provide nurses with free health benefits app

An Irish tech start-up is aiming to provide nurses and frontline healthcare workers with more than €1m worth of free employee health and wellbeing benefits.

And it has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money to fund the project. It estimates it could cost €100,000 to provide the service at cost price for around 100,000 health care workers.

Any extra funds raised would be used to tailor the programme more specifically for healthcare professionals and/or to provide it in other settings such as nursing homes.

KudosHealth launched its online engagement tool in 2017 which allows companies to reward staff for their healthy activity and engages employees of all fitness levels.

The aim of the digital health platform, which is accessed through the KudosHealth app, is to incentivise and motivate employees to track, manage and improve their own health in the areas of physical activity, nutrition, mindfulness and sleep.

By using common wearable devices such as Fitbits or health apps, employees earn points which can be redeemed for discounts in local stores. Participating employees receive perks and discounts worth between €500 and €1,000 every year for tracking and improving their health.

KudosHealth, which was established in Sligo in 2017, is an Enterprise Ireland client and has four employees. It normally licences the platform to large corporate employers, so they can provide health and wellbeing benefits to their employees.

CEO Declan Trumble said he got the idea to try and provide the service for free to healthcare workers when listening to President Michael D. Higgins on The Late Late Show on May 29 speaking about frontline workers’ pay. Mr Trumble says:

“Our doctors and nurses have some of the most physically and psychologically demanding roles in the community yet typically don’t get the same employee health and wellbeing benefits as many in the private sector get from their large corporate employers. 

“Due to shift work and long working hours, it is often difficult for healthcare staff who are under even more pressure and stress since the arrival of Covid-19 — to find time needed to look after their own health and participate in workplace health initiatives that can often be time and location dependent. It’s at times like this during a global pandemic we realise the resilience and courage that these frontline healthcare workers have, just to come to work and do their jobs and that’s why we wanted to help.

“We wanted to provide them with something that would be worthwhile and last long after Covid-19 has been eradicated. However, as a start-up we just don’t have the financial resources to provide new software and continuous support to manage such a large initiative for free, so we opted to run a GoFundMe campaign.”  

Mr Trumble said it was a way the general public could show their support for frontline workers but also a way for the local and national business community to show their appreciation by offering perks and discounts on their products and services for those staff who participate and improve their health.

He added that companies in the Irish private spend over €200m a year on health and well-being programmes but it is generally not provided to those in the public sector due to tight budgets.

“Corporate well-being programmes have been around for a long time, and large companies understand the value that they bring to an organisation, helping them to create a company culture focused around the health and well-being of the employees, understanding that healthier, happier employees are good for business, employee health programmes can help reduce absences due to sickness and illness, improve productivity, and attract and retain staff,” he said.

If you would like to donate to the GoFundMe campaign, click here KudosHealth GoFundMe.

Any consumer brands or local retailers that would like to find out more about how their brand can become involved can get in touch at info@kudoshealth.com