A Start-up Founder's Story: BIOStress

Problem

Work-related stress and burnout costs the UK economy £28bn a year (Axa UK, 2023). Stress is implicated in many other mental and physical health conditions, from cardiovascular disease, to diabetes, depression, anxiety, muscular skeletal problems and even some cancers.

Yet, currently, there is no objective measure of stress. The only real tool is to subjectively ask people, ‘are you stressed?’ and that’s the basis for how most stress metrics are derived. Stress is our focus because it’s one thing that can be addressed, by both an individual and an employer, to create the biggest impact for people and business.

Our aim is to better understand stress so that we can move healthcare from treatment to prevention, enhance wellbeing and relieve the burden on health services worldwide.

Solution

At Biostress, we have created the world’s most accurate objective measure of stress, which considers both physiological and psychological factors.

We work with organisations and their employees to identify stressors in the workplace. Based on the data we collect and monitor, we give people a better understanding of their own stress levels so they can take appropriate action. Longer term, this improves sickness absence, staff retention, productivity and staff engagement.

Many people view stress as a disease and we immediately think of it as something negative, but it’s actually an incredibly positive resource for human beings. It literally is the reason we get out of bed every morning by elevating levels of cortisol when we wake up. Imagine if we could better understand, manage and harness stress? What would we be able to achieve?

How does it work?

Physiological data taken from wrist-based wearables is monitored, typically 24/7 over a week, to identify someone’s physiological levels of stress. We have patented several algorithms to help us do this objectively. We combine a range of biometric sensor data, including electrodermal activity, which is the amount of sweat on your skin at that point of your wrist. We also ask employees to complete validated psychometric tests and to rate their daily levels of stress.

Feedback is provided in a 1:1 setting. We explain the data and suggest recommendations in a personalised improvement programme. At an organisational level we anonymise and aggregate the data, to demonstrate where stressors are occurring in the workforce and how they might be managed. We monitor employees every three months to assess whether our recommendations are creating a positive impact - both for individual wellbeing and business performance.

We often end up with two conflicting accounts of people’s experiences. One of which is their own perception, but the other is the reality, as recorded by the physiological monitoring. It’s very rare that the two things align. As a result, we can say fairly confidently that people are not aware of their stress. Sometimes people are stressed when they don’t think they are, and sometimes they aren’t stressed when physiologically they are.

Journey and priorities

We incorporated the business in October 2020 and it took us two years to reach the turning point of receiving both Angel investment and an Innovate UK grant, to develop the product. Pre-2022 was all about exploration and validation.

Now the product is being used and paid for by a range of customers. We’re running trials in different sectors, like call centres and construction, to understand whether there are any industry-level differences in stress. We’re currently operational in five countries across the world and are looking to raise investment, so we can enhance the product and scale up our resource. We have more organisations wanting to do trials than we have the capacity to service. It’s frustrating as we know demand is there, but we need investment to take it to the next level.

Learnings

There are many knock backs on a start-up journey, so you need an incredibly thick skin. You must have an unshakable belief in your idea. This is what gives entrepreneurs and start-ups their motivation - that they can make a difference. Whatever it is you’re doing, or want to do, you must be prepared to fight for it.

One of the most important things for me is that there are two of us. I’m a co-founder and there’s no way I could have stayed on this journey on my own. You need someone to lean on and vice versa. It’s true when they share a trouble shared is a trouble halved. Entrepreneurship is totally a team thing for us. You need other people to help you, especially through the difficult times, and this in turn creates less individual pressure.

Mental health awareness

As we promote stress management, it’s essential that we live by our own mantra. We have a very open business culture within our team. People tell us when they want to work and working hours are completely flexible. For me personally, it's exercise and activity that's the biggest thing in helping me manage my own stress. I enjoy running to clear my head and break things up.

We’re starting to see organisations becoming more aware of stress as a wellbeing issue. But that’s exactly it, we’re still in the awareness stage. We need a better understanding of what stress is and critically, what it isn't, so we can better use it to our advantage to improve performance, rather than be afraid of it. At the moment, everyone’s so fearful, but it’s a huge positive force, or it should be, if used in the right way.

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BIOStress is co-founded by Tim Routledge (CSO and King’s alumnus, MS Applied Neuroscience) and Tim Wade (CEO).

Learn more about BIOStress on their website or LinkedIn.

The Entrepreneurship Institute supports students, staff and alumni, just like Tim, to start and scale their ideas and ventures through the King's Start-up Accelerator. If you would like to know more, check out our website.