The Company
Evolyst are leaders in delivering data-led products that make a real positive difference to the wellbeing of people around the world.
The Birmingham-based software company has developed an innovative workplace mental health analytics software solution Lumien, which allows clients to manage and support employee mental health and build a positive mental health strategy.
Evolyst has growing client numbers, secured contracts with a corporate client and a pipeline of contracts in negotiation.
The Challenge
The Lumien analytics platform allows clients to manage and support employee mental health and build a positive mental health and wellbeing strategy. Lumien is a SaaS platform (Software as a Service), which allows companies to use Lumien as a starting point to their mental health and wellbeing strategy, utilising it internally, or with an external provider. The system provides all employees with a tool that anonymously shows them their own mental health and wellbeing data, whilst recommending tips, resources and events/activities loaded on to the platform by the employer. The employer receives aggregated data reports in the background, allowing them to see where their employees need support, and what effect this has on their productivity and bottom line.
Lumien’s clients are now seeking further proactive support rather than reactive support in order to predict a team's mental health and the effect of management decisions on productivity. This has driven the development of an advanced version of the platform to provide predictive analysis, facilitate high level decision-making and ultimately prevent mental health issues via early intervention.
The Lumien platform has provided help to multiple companies, supporting thousands of employees already, but now requires specialist expertise to take the platform to the next level, meeting demand and achieving growth.
The Solution
The complex combination of AI/ML techniques with multi-stranded datasets and an understanding of mental health issues/metrics/diagnostics underpinned by the social and psychological considerations is best suited to Aston University’s academic team from the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. The academic expertise will apply sophisticated ML techniques to enhance functionality and deliver an advanced version of the Lumien platform at scale. This will enable Lumien to increase revenue via an advanced offering, provide predictive data analysis of workplace mental health and deliver innovative software to improve productivity through preventive mental health strategies. The embedded ML skills will allow continual development of the platform post KTP.
Further benefits of the project include:
- Enabling organisations to better plan and manage risk, create a supportive work environment to increase employee wellbeing, prevent issues and ultimately improve productivity.
- Providing rich data on the effects of age, gender and industry on occurrences of mental health issues to inform future research.
- Enhancing Lumien's reputation as a trusted provider, with the potential to apply for awards
- Additional job creation at Lumien as it realises its growth plans.
The project outcomes will be integrated into Aston's curriculum via teaching case studies, ensuring future graduates are well prepared to strive in real workplace scenarios and appropriately equipped in software development.
The Team
The academic supervisor on the project is Dr Christopher Buckingham, reader in Computer Science at Aston University. His research focuses on socio-technical aspects such as how technology can address sociological and psychological issues such as psychological classification and decision-making, reasoning with uncertainty, mental health informatics and Intelligent Knowledge-Based Systems.
Dr Buckingham will be joined by Dr Felipe Campelo, a lecturer in Computer Science. Dr Campelo's research focuses on the development of integrated solution frameworks for prescriptive data analytics, effectively connecting data mining, statistical modelling, optimisation and multi-criteria decision-making, which is invaluable in supporting the data analysis and predictive modelling Evolyst requires.
Academic support will be provided by Dr Luis Manso, lecturer in Computer Science at Aston University. He has research interests in various aspects of artificial intelligence, and expertise in data structures and relationships between data.
Next steps
The KTP is expected to complete in 2022 – look out for more updates by following us on Twitter and checking our webpage.
For more information about Knowledge Transfer Partnerships or an informal chat, email ktp@aston.ac.uk or call 0121 204 4242.