Measuring Employee Wellbeing with Dr. Don Brown, LifeOmic

Welcome to another episode of the HRchat show. In this episode, we consider tech to monitor and assess employee wellbeing.

Bill's guest this time is Dr. Don Brown, Founder, and CEO of LifeOmic, a software company that leverages the cloud, machine learning, and mobile devices to offer disruptive solutions to healthcare providers, researchers, employers, health coaches, health IT companies and individuals.

His first company was acquired by EDS in 1986. He founded Software Artistry in 1988 which became the first software company in Indiana ever to go public and was later acquired by IBM for $200 million. Don then founded and served as CEO of Interactive Intelligence which went public in 1999 and was acquired by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories in 2016 for $1.4 billion.

Don received a bachelor’s in physics from Indiana University in 1978, a master’s in computer science from IU in 1982, an MD from the Indiana University School of Medicine in 1985, and a master’s in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University in 2017.

Questions Include: 

• LifeOmic had its start in the oncology space around healthcare data aggregation and visualization. How has this background informed your approach to corporate wellness?
• What value does a medical-grade approach to wellness have for both the employees and the employers?
• The core of the LifeOmic Precision Wellness solution is the five pillars of health – plant-based nutrition, activity, mindfulness, sleep, and intermittent fasting. Based on hundreds of scientific studies, these pillars will, your team claims, improve your employees' health. Can you tell us more about the five pillars of health and ways HR can be more mindful of each to encourage better habits in the workplace? 
• Using your tools, employees can do self mini-checkups using fitness wearables, connected scales, blood pressure cuffs, spirometers and more to monitor their improvements. You support seamless connection to Fitbit, Oura and all Healthkit devices. Can you tell me more about how the tech can monitor employee health in real-time? 
• Using advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence, LifeOmic Precision Wellness aims to create and deliver tailored recommendations to improve health as well as identify areas employees should proactively discuss with their doctor. Many HR pros remain skeptical about the pervasiveness of AI and machine learning as presc