Wellness Sensor

A software startup building tools to help enterprise employers monitor employee wellbeing and improve their health and wellness imagined a device that would allow them to collect behavioural data in the workplace. Software, algorithms and AI had allowed Hölmetrics to develop a rich set of tools to provide insights to their clients, but in order to collect data beyond the screen they needed to develop sensors that could be deployed throughout an office.

Hölmetrics contracted Tangent to help them develop proof-of-concept IoT sensors that could be deployed and used to collect wellness data in a large workplace. The company had an in-house team with considerable experience in software, but lacked hardware expertise. Their team was engaged in the development of their core product offering, and attempting to develop hardware without assistance would have been time consuming and distracting from their mission.

Using our own in-house network stack, hardware, and technologies, the Tangent Electrical, Firmware, and Mechanical teams quickly set to work to develop proof of concept sensors that could be integrated with their existing software suite.

The result was a discrete sensor that was deployed in a workplace, passively gathering employee wellness data.

The amount of data the system generated posed an unexpected challenge. The data was of good quality, but the volume posed a significant processing problem. The Tangent team worked to filter the data so that key insights among the data were revealed and reported.

When developing a proof of concept prototype, it is difficult to slow or filter data aggregation because it is not yet clear what data provides the best insights. Tangent’s custom IoT network stack allowed the team to be flexible and capture edge insights with minimal effort, allowing us to build filters and algorithms to provide insight on the full spectrum of available data.

Hölmetrics provides a SaaS solution for identifying the organizational problems that lead to turnover, disengagement, even disability leave among employees. Their core service offering is to help enterprise firms uncover root problems that lead to these symptoms. Tangent was able to quickly integrate with their existing team, augmenting their in-house knowledge and capability, to extend their capabilities into IoT sensors and provide meaningful insights from the resulting data.

The proof of concept prototype has been deployed and continues to gather data for the company. Hölmetrics intends to move on to a more advanced proof of concept system that incorporates edge machine learning and artificial intelligence. Tangent looks forward to collaborating with them in this exciting endeavour.