AI and predictive health analytics to identify the underlying causes of mental and physical illness

Within occupational health, there has been a recent shift in focus from physical hazards in the workplace to the impact of the psychosocial work environment on health. Evidence suggests mental health underpins physical health; however, this is under-recognised, under-reported and treatment protocols are lacking. The impact of the environment, particularly the work environment on mental health is also increasingly recognised. There is a lack of affordable resource available to assess, in combination, both mental health and physical health, explore their inter-relationships, and relate these to underlying causes. Praxis Medicare has developed an advanced cloud-based health risk analytics programme (Praxis RISK) in partnership with IBM Watson. Praxis widens the spectrum of health risks to include mental health and physical health risk and relates these to the underlying behavioural and environmental causes. This project seeks to explore the feasibility of adapting the Praxis programme for the under-served SME corporate health market, addressing the growing problem of presenteeism (where workers are present but non-productive) and sickness absence related to both mental and physical health.