stress management and biofeedback

Psychological stress contributes significantly to a high percentage of illness and is responsible for much absenteeism from work in the UK. Stress management and stress audits have been adopted by many corporate bodies in response to government directives. Audits are currently based on self-assessment questionnaires. Biometric data is not used because affordable and effective processes (hardware and software) are not available, though the technology to develop them is.

We are engaged in a project which will result in the development of a method for corporate bodies to monitor the stress levels in their organisation continuously, and to evaluate the impact of any stress-reducing policies or measures they introduce. This is achieved through the use of a number of sensors which assess a number of basic physiological parameters continuously, and provide feedback to the user. Neural network analysis of results is crucial to the analysis of the data, and improving the feedback to the user.

We have interest in such a process from a number of organisations and a commitment from a public body to trial it when it becomes available. Clinical equipment is too expensive to be used to collect data from multiple users, hence the need to design and build our own devices.

We are collaborating with a clinical psychiatrist who is expert in this field (undoyourstress.com), and who currently uses the above-mentioned clinical equipment; he also is looking forward to trialling our devices.

We believe that the proposed development will result in an affordable effective process that will make a significant contribution to public health.