Unlocking personal health management & prevention
A healthy lifestyle means a balanced diet, not smoking, drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol, exercising and resting adequately. All these habits minimize the likelihood of developing a serious illness: As much as 80% of risk reduction of developing a deadly chronic disease. Yet, unhealthy behaviours are among the 7 main causes of reduced health and wellness among Germany’s population. This negative trend fits into the bigger global picture: Each year about 41 million people die of chronic diseases worldwide, of which at least 14 million could have been prevented with a change in behavior.
In consequence, prevention and health promotion should nowadays contribute as an overarching task among several players in all sectors of society. The aim of prevention is to avoid, delay or prevent illnesses. This is where wellabe comes into play. The Munich-based startup wellabe, together with renowned investors, is clear about its mission: To detect early indicators of noncommunicable diseases and to support individuals in adopting an aligned, healthier lifestyle.
Let’s have a look at how wellabe is creating value for the healthcare system.
Michael (wellabe): First and foremost, our vision is to empower people to manage their personal health and become the healthiest version of themselves. At the same time, employers face massive economic burdens and productivity losses caused by chronic diseases, work-related stress, illnesses and disengagement. They have realized their responsibility in offering health-related benefits to their employees, which is where we come into the picture. Employees can participate in our modern, digitized health checkups that only take 15 minutes. Important health parameters such as blood pressure, relevant blood values, body composition, lung functionality and heart rate variability are available digitally in real time. This has helped thousands of individuals to become aware of their health status.
We also believe that modern healthcare requires low thresholds, especially for initial preventive entry points: Our mobile lab is set out to make health assessments super simple. It allows us to conduct checkups for our customer’s employees right at their offices.
Of course, we are not planning on stopping here. To reach as many people as possible, we have partnered with insurance companies as well as healthcare providers such as SanusX and Sana Kliniken. By combining access to major insurance groups and corporate clients with Sana’s medical expertise and our preventative platform, we build seamless user journeys and engaging healthcare solutions that drive values and save costs.
With its corporate health offer, wellabe has already performed over 15,000 checkups. Do you believe Covid-19 has fueled the general demand for personal health management as well as corporate health benefits?
Michael (wellabe): Certainly yes, both for corporate health and at an individual level. Awareness of the negative impact of pre-existing health conditions as risk factors has increased; at the same time, the resources of healthcare providers have become even more scarce.
Some of the personal health trends emerging include the increased popularity of wearables, fitness trackers, personalized nutrition plans and the general quest for self-optimization. We definitely see it as an important trend to complement the broader healthcare system, which traditionally has not prioritized prevention or promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Building onto the market trend, wellabe received a 7-digit series A plus earlier this year. How do the investors see wellabe’s role and potential in the healthcare industry?
Mateusz Kurysz, Head of M&A, SanusX: After over a year of successful cooperation between wellabe and SanusX, SanusX decided to invest in wellabe in May 2022, to strengthen the cooperation and develop a roadmap for the rollout of new products. Both wellabe and SanusX are active in the market of B2B2C health offerings for employees; we believe that wellabe’s products constitute a valuable part of every individual’s journey to stay healthy.
Michael (wellabe): We are delighted to welcome SanusX, who had already been a long-standing customer and partner, as a new investor, as well as to continue the journey with our existing investors Sana Kliniken and Earlybird Health. With the new funding, we plan to grow and expand our corporate health business. Together with our partners, we are united by the vision of helping people to be more proactive and active when it comes to their health; we want to achieve this goal with a very comprehensive corporate health offer. Beyond that, we are developing more solutions to help people adopt healthy habits that fit into their life - with healthy nutrition and mindfulness at the core.
Dr. Christoph Massner, Principal at Earlybird Health: wellabe provides a link between different stakeholders: employers, health insurers, and health care providers. This positioning is unique in Europe and could only be achieved because of the team’s in-depth knowledge of healthcare markets.
Multi-stakeholder business models are often challenging to execute, but the team brings significant value to the healthcare industry and, most importantly, to patients. The investments by Sana Kliniken and Sanus-X will allow Wellabe to further scale their commercialization in Germany and beyond.
We firmly believe that wellabe will be able to position itself as a major player in the prevention market, benefiting from the support of these strong strategic partners.
https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/lifestyle-diseases-economic-burden-health-services