Ensuring a healthy workforce

Azran: Hospitals and healthcare providers have often been reactive rather than preventative. Photo: Naluri

DIGITAL health and well-being company Naluri was founded with a simple yet lofty mission: to fundamentally rethink how the healthcare sector operates.

Azran Osman-Rani, the company’s chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, tells StarBiz 7 that the idea for Naluri was sparked after reflecting on core problems within the industry.

The first of these was that the healthcare system had been largely concerned with physical well-being and treatment, with little recognition of the mental health of chronic disease patients who face anxiety and depression.

A lack of mental health support may lead to skipped chemotherapy sessions or missed medication, compounding existing health problems.

“Another issue was that hospitals and even telehealth platforms are very reactive rather than preventative,” he continues. “They wait until people are very sick or distressed before they are expected to come to the hospital. By that point, it becomes very costly and complex.”

Moreover, he notes the rising costs of healthcare and health insurance premiums, as well as a healthcare system that incentivises treatment and medication rather than long-term health.

“Doctors get paid whether you actually get healthy or not,” he explains.

“I wondered if there was a different way to imagine health and to create a different model.”

Prior to starting Naluri, Azran had already amassed significant experience building and running companies across sectors, serving as iFlix’s Group COO and CEO for Malaysia, and as founding CEO of AirAsia X.

It was in fact his experience in the airline business that helped him visualise Naluri’s solutions. “One of the most unpredictable costs for airlines is engine maintenance,” he says.

“What airlines have is a power-by-the-hour (PBH) arrangement with the maintenance and repair provider, where they pay a fixed fee based on the number of hours flown, rather than each time it breaks down.”

This way, providers are incentivised to ensure engines are kept in top condition and last as long as possible.

“I thought, shouldn’t there be a similar model for healthcare so that doctors are focused on keeping you healthy and out of the hospital?”

Together with president and co-founder Dr Jeremy Ting, he formed Naluri, a health solution combining behaviour science, data science and digital design to aid in predicting, preventing and managing physical and mental health conditions.

Through personalised, structured care and professional coaching across various disciplines, Naluri assists users in building healthy habits to increase mental resilience, systematically reduce chronic disease risk factors, and improve quality of life.

Early on, the company primarily served large corporate employers in delivering data-driven corporate wellness programmes for employees.

“It was the best fit as corporations have the means, and as well as a real awareness of the effects of employee health and the substantial issue of sick leave,” Azran shares.

“We really grew on the back of the Covid-19 period as large enterprises – from telcos and banks to airlines – were seeing distress, burn-out and deep depression among their employees. Additionally, because everyone was working remotely, they needed a digital solution.”

Today, Naluri has supported over 200 companies with its comprehensive corporate health programme offerings.

They include assessments and screening tools which assist organisations map the health and risk levels of employees, and proactive marketing campaigns to promote awareness and increase enrolment.

“From there, we provide a care team of coaches that include psychologists, dietitians, fitness coaches and pharmacists to help you achieve quantifiable health improvement,” he adds.

“Finally, we are able to present it all together for clients in a data-driven report so they can see the impact and return on investment.”

For its analyses, the company draws from its database spanning six years of medical claims involving 500,000 employees and 30 countries.

Azran also reveals that the business is now prioritising the in-house development of AI tools to support its team of health professionals. Such technologies can serve to enhance efficiency by identifying critical cases, providing recommended actions, and summarising case notes.

He cites one real-life example of an employee who had been struggling with a deep mental health crisis but hadn’t reached out for help.

Through natural language processing, which could quantify words and sentence structures in her communications, the team was alerted to an alarming dip in her emotional sentiment and quickly intervened.

“Because we’re better at proactively reaching out rather than waiting for them to come, we’ve likely done a lot to lower critical levels of mental health incidents in the workplace,” he says.

Since its founding in 2017, Naluri has expanded its presence regionally to Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Azran shares that a key focus area for him will be on raising capital to fund the company’s continued growth.

“We are now on the cusp of being profitable within the year, which will be helpful especially as the capital available has shrunk significantly and investors are becoming more conservative,” he says.

On a broader, long-term level, the CEO is also looking to further Naluri’s partnerships with health insurance companies, which he says now comprise a quarter of the business.

The idea is for Naluri’s mental and physical health programmes and services to be bundled with health insurance, resulting in healthier members, lowered risks, and thus, fewer claims.

“It’s difficult because it requires changing the industry – nothing like it exists locally today,” he admits. “We have to do the work, engage and build the data models to convince insurance companies that bundling our solution is beneficial.”