What is the role of ethnic-specific data in the reshaping of healthcare?

Planet Nourish is more than a digital platform delivering behaviour change through ethically tailored cooking coaching and community.

We are a tech startup with a clear focus on changing the future of healthcare.

Our platform is both a community and a digital resource - it delivers a different kind of healthcare, one tailored to ethnicity and disease. But we aim to do something that goes much further.

Our users form a community and support each other to change behaviours to improve health.

Our users also create invaluable data that can be used to leverage change not just within our Planet Nourish community but by informing how the South Asian community’s health, diet, and behaviour interrelate.

We believe we can leverage our data not just to manage diseases such as type 2 diabetes but also to prevent them.

Data, diet, community, diversity

We know that many healthcare systems are recognising that data use has changed since the pandemic. We’ve all become more used to remote healthcare and technology becoming central to our health experience - whether we’re using a Fitbit to measure our sleep or working with our GP to undertake a 24-hour test with a portable electrocardiogram.

But there’s a whole new level of data use that Planet Nourish is keen to explore with its users: the role of diversity in shaping healthcare.

PaaS - a new acronym for partnership in health and wellbeing

We’ve got used to SaaS - Software as a Service, and PaaS - Prevention as a Service, is a natural extension of this technological innovation. Planet Nourish aims to group and cluster data collected from its app users to help predict patterns and personalise suggestions for health and wellness.

In other words, our users help create the data which informs and advises about diet and wellbeing specific to the South Asian population. Our unique ethnic dataset will lead the way for data to improve the health of south Asians. We can then apply the framework to other ethnic groups to tailor their healthcare.

Applying the Ethnic Dataset to the Workplace

Employers benefit from this approach as much as individuals.

A culturally competent workplace health and wellness approach creates a more engaged workforce and a sense of genuine inclusion.

D&I stops being a buzzword and becomes a core HR value when employees see it as an investment in workplace wellness through a welcoming interface that protects their anonymity whilst improving their wellbeing.

Organisations can meet their ESG goals whilst helping their teams live better lives through effective technology designed with inclusivity and diversity at its core.

By incorporating PaaS platforms such as Planet Nourish in their D&I initiatives, they can effectively utilise ethnic-specific data to manage with more cultural competence.