For millions of sedentary, overweight office workers, changing habits is, literally, a life or death matter. Healthy living and exercising have been shown to have a significant impact on life expectancy, with some studies suggesting that sedentary people are more than thrice prone to dying from heart diseases than active ones.
Employees' wellbeing is a key issue that companies must address to bring happiness and motivation at work, as stressed out and unhealthy employees turn into a financial burden as well; while it's difficult to obtain precise data, it is estimated that, within the EU, the costs of work-related depression are about €617bn annually.
While solutions that address corporate wellbeing do already exist, a comprehensive platform combining AI and gamification techniques to increase employees' engagement, was still lacking. Live Well Work Well (L3W), an innovation activity supported by EIT Digital as part of its Digital Wellbeing focus area, is going to fill this void, providing an all-in-one solution to automatically track employees' fitness activities with wearables and Internet of Medical Things devices and stimulating them in performing personalized fitness circuits with their colleagues.
The initiative is led by Italian company Santer Reply, with DFKI and OKKAM as partners. L3W's online platform aims at encouraging healthier lifestyle by profiling the employees and assigning them fitness activities to perform during the week. Compliance is totally voluntary and there's no obligation towards the company or the physicians. Occupational doctors, however, will have access to the software, to monitor the employee's health conditions and whether he is actually engaged in the recommended activities.
