- Do you have neck, back, or lumbar pain from long hours of computer work? If yes, you’re not alone ☹️ And the reason is actually not just because you work long hours on the computer, but because you’re sitting incorrectly at it.
- Moreover, as it turns out, such problems cause employees more losses for companies than the ubiquitous common cold, cardiovascular diseases, and even trendy mental health issues!
- But then that means companies can invest in a platform to tackle this problem. And it could be structured like this:
Project Essence
Vitrue Health aims to relieve computer-based workers from neck and back pain, which unfortunately arises from such work.
Sitting at a computer is not a natural posture for humans. Moreover, many people sit at computers improperly.
As a result, regularly sitting at computers causes musculoskeletal disorders—spinal curvature and displacement, disproportionate increases in muscle tone, which lead to pain. This pain can occur not only in the neck and back but also in the lower back, shoulders, forearms, wrists, and even in the legs, ankles, and feet.
In some countries, including the UK, where today’s startup originates, there is a law requiring employers to provide appropriate ergonomics for computer workers.
Before the pandemic, this applied only to office workers. But during quarantine, when most people started working from home, these requirements were extended to remote employees of companies.
Therefore, the first task that the startup solves is to certify computer workstations for office and remote employees using its platform.
However, proper ergonomics alone will not relieve people of pain. To address this, the startup offers a more comprehensive solution to the problem of pain resulting from sitting at a computer.
The ergonomic requirements for workstation certification are universal. But each person is unhappy in their own way 😉 Vitrue Health can provide individuals with personalized recommendations for equipping their workstation—ensuring that it meets certification requirements and addresses their personal pain.
After creating a suitable workstation and certifying it, each platform user receives a 10-day training program on proper computer work skills—which includes a set of exercises to relieve pain and prevent its occurrence.
This program is also individualized, depending on the type of work and the pain experienced by the individual.
However, mindlessly performing any exercises can do more harm than good. To prevent this, the platform not only provides exercises but also explains their biomechanics—ensuring that exercises are performed correctly and yield the desired results.
However, teaching once and hoping that a person will behave that way in the future is naive 😉 It is necessary to make the right behavior a habit. Therefore, the platform includes a set of tools that regularly “intervene” in a person’s computer work to cultivate such habits.
A small but very important feature of the platform is that it periodically surveys users to obtain subjective information about their well-being related to pain in the neck, back, lower back, and legs. This information is summarized by the platform in reports sent to company management—so they understand that money spent on Vitrue Health is not wasted 😉
The startup offers three tariffs for companies of different sizes. However, for specific prices, you need to contact the startup directly.
In the framework of modern trends, the startup writes about how the platform produces individualized recommendations and sets of exercises using AI. In particular, they even use computer vision to recognize the poses of a person sitting at a computer and draw corresponding conclusions.
The startup has been operating since 2018 and has a sufficient number of client companies.
Currently, Vitrue Health has raised €3.7 million in new investments, increasing the total investment in the project to €6.5 million.
What’s Interesting
At first, I noticed this startup because I also suffer from neck and shoulder pain — most likely from long and regular computer work ☹️
However, after searching the internet, I realized that this problem is of enormous scale. According to the World Health Organization, in 2022, 1.71 billion people experienced musculoskeletal problems. For some of them, of course, the problems are caused by injuries and illnesses, but sedentary work is almost the main source of such problems.
These problems worsened during the pandemic. Before quarantine, most people worked in offices, where they had relatively ergonomic workstations—whether required by legislation or not.
During quarantine, people settled into their homes and it began—working on laptops while sitting on stools at kitchen tables, lying on sofas, at their child’s desk, at a cafe table, and in other unsuitable places. Consequently, problems worsened—and 50–60% of remote workers began experiencing them.
Although even before the quarantine, things were not better.
For example, much is said about mental health and its impact on work productivity—resulting in some companies even connecting their employees to services and applications to improve mental health.
But if you look at American statistics from 2015, the most working days were lost not due to poor emotional states, not due to ubiquitous colds, not due to cardiovascular diseases—but due to musculoskeletal problems. That year, it was even the most common reason for missed workdays.
If we look at British data for 2021–2022, we learn that 477,000 Britons suffered from work-related musculoskeletal problems. Employers lost 7.3 million workdays of their employees because of this.
And if people continue to work in such conditions, their productivity may decrease by 20%—which, again, translates into lost profits or direct losses for companies.
Thus, neck and back pain caused by computer work is a problem that companies can well pay to solve. It will be more profitable for them than accepting its consequences.
Where to Go
As soon as mental health became trendy, thousands of applications to improve mental health appeared, and a dozen of them even became billion-dollar companies riding that wave.
However, it turns out that neck, back, lumbar, and leg pain caused by computer work is a problem of no lesser magnitude, both in severity and prevalence. Moreover, it’s physically tangible and cannot be cured—only measures can be taken constantly to prevent it from worsening.
Moreover, modern AI and computer vision technologies can really help with this—which can monitor how correctly a person sits at a computer, tailored to their individual problems. This means that the effectiveness of such applications can significantly improve right now.
So, the potential direction to move in is the creation of platforms and applications that help reduce the number of musculoskeletal problems caused by computer work.
As cynical as it may sound, this problem currently lacks “trendiness” for billion-dollar companies to start emerging on its wave. But all the real prerequisites for this are present.
Moreover, this is a real problem, for which many people will be grateful for help in solving—regardless of whether it’s a trendy issue or not.
About the Company
Vitrue Health
Website: vitruehealth.com
Last round: €3.7M, 29.02.2024
Total investments: €6.5M, rounds: 5