Building Nigeria’s first workforce risk intelligence platform: Lessons from the ground

In Nigeria, a startup named WellNewMe is charting a unique course in the digital health space, positioning itself not as a wellness app, but as a workforce health-risk intelligence platform. The company's founder, Dr. Adefunke Soyibo, explained that this distinction is crucial. Unlike wellness apps that focus on individual activity tracking, WellNewMe provides employers, brokers, and insurers with critical insights into concentrated health risks within their workforces, their trends, and implications for underwriting, benefits design, and overall costs.

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Wellness is an easy sell. Everyone nods along to the idea that healthier employees are more productive employees. But somewhere in the early build, we made a decision that has shaped everything since: WellNewMe would not be a wellness app. It would be a workforce health-risk intelligence platform, closer in spirit to a credit reference agency than to a fitness tracker.

This strategic focus on risk intelligence requires a different approach to product development and buyer engagement. WellNewMe serves four distinct user groups: employees seeking personal health insights, HR directors needing aggregated organizational risk data, brokers requiring renewal pipeline intelligence, and insurers needing portfolio-level risk profiles for underwriting. Building these varied portals on a shared data foundation, while resisting the temptation to over-engineer, has been a significant architectural challenge.

Data sensitivity is paramount for WellNewMe, given the platform's focus on health information. The company has prioritized using validated and less stigmatizing assessment tools, such as the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, to foster trust among users. Dr. Soyibo stated that trust is the core product in this industry, making honest engagement with the platform essential for its success.

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A wellness app tells an individual how many steps they took. A risk-intelligence platform tells an employer, a broker, or an insurer something they can actually act on: where risk is concentrated in a workforce, how it is trending, and what it means for underwriting, benefits design, and cost.

The platform operates simultaneously in the UK and Nigeria, presenting a unique set of challenges and learning opportunities. Navigating different regulatory environments, payment landscapes, and even varying terminologies for health discussions requires significant adaptability. WellNewMe's commitment to local production, exemplified by its manufacturing facility in Lekki, Lagos, aims to make quality furniture affordable and accessible, merging high standards with economic viability.

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Trust, in this business, is the product.