Meet the UK-Ireland Entrepreneurs: Kaido grows with EIT Health Headstart funding

A wellness platform

Kaido, a UK-based start-up funded through EIT Health’s Headstart programme, launched Kaido Wellbeing, a health engagement platform that Kaido licenses to employers as an employee wellness strategy, in January 2018.

The platform provides a Kaido Challenge, which takes employees on a 60-day journey exploring their physical, mental and social wellbeing. Either individually, or as part of a self-selected team users are taken on a virtual journey, recently the ‘Arctic Expedition.

’ Their fuel for the journey is Kaido Points, earned based on the improvements they make in their physical activity, nutrition, sleep and mindfulness. Kaido supports this journey with articles and webinar content to educate and support progress. At the end of the challenge, the employee receives an anonymised and aggregate engagement report, designed to help them to better understand the needs of their workforce and build a more effective future wellness strategy. Out of its current users, 76.5% increased their physical activity over the course of the 60-day challenge and 36.8% reported feeling less stressed at work.

Kaido was founded in by Rich Westman, who had previously worked as a Sports Scientist, supporting with the physical development of professional athletes in Rugby Union and Tennis. Rich set up Kaido with a mission to share professional health expertise to the masses and empower more people to look after their health and wellbeing.

Joining the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network digital health incubator in 2016, Kaido secured funding from EIT Health’s Headstart and Proof of Concept Fund in the same year.

With this support, Rich focussed on developing the technology upon which the Kaido Wellbeing programme is based. This work began with the development of Kaido’s ‘insights platform.’ An advanced data analytics capability that allows a user to connect popular wearables and smartphone applications for the purpose of tracking their health and taking part in the challenge. In the same year, Kaido received funding from Creative England as part of their Digital Health programme and were also part of Microsoft’s prestigious IOT and Data Analytics Accelerator.

Kaido Wellbeing originally launched into 3 NHS Trusts: East Lancashire NHS Trust, East Cheshire NHS Trust and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. The results from this proof-of-concept went well, and the programme is now up and running in 14 NHS Trusts and a number of private sector organisations. One of the largest success stories to date is Müller UK & Ireland, who made the programme accessible to 12,000 employees across their 52 UK Sites.

Kaido Wellbeing have just signed a deal with Cohort Software, the largest occupational health software provider in the UK. Announced at Cohort Software’s Annual User Conference in early November, Rich commented on the potential for further expansion: “As well as the immediate access to 100+ UK Companies, Cohort Software also operates in Australia, New Zealand and the far East, so this opportunity really is a testament to our growth as a company and allows us to continue striving towards realising our ambitions for the solution.”

Kaido was recently accepted into Gymshark’s prestigious incubator for digital technology companies, and is based in Birmingham, UK. In 2019 Kaido will release Version 2 of the Kaido Wellbeing solution and have ambitions to scale the platform further to benefit the employees of small to medium companies who employ 99% of business employees. With the right financial backing, Kaido also hope to expand their solution overseas working with some of the fantastic EIT Health partners.