As part of our interview series for the Shortlisted companies in the AXA PP HealthTech & You Breakout Award 2016 we are delighted to be speaking to Paul Nuki of StepJockey. The Breakout Award is dedicated to the piece of health tech that has most embedded itself into the public’s lives over the past year. The winner will be decided by YOU.

Paul Nuki – CEO StepJockey

SD – Hi, could you please introduce yourself?

I’m Paul Nuki, CEO of StepJockey.

SD – Where are you based?

We’ve just moved to offices in Soho, London. We also have an office in Cornwall overlooking St Austell bay.

SD – What is your background?

I’m a journalist by trade. I was chief editor of the NHS website www.nhs.uk for seven years from launch to 40 million monthly users. Before that I was Focus Editor at the Sunday Times, where I spent more than a decade.

SD – What has been the inspiration for StepJockey?

Unusually for a tech company, StepJockey was founded by a woman. My wife Helen, a behavioural economics expert, had the idea after our seven-year-old daughter, Litzi, wondered why official signs – in her words – “only tell you about the things that are bad for you”. It made Helen think about how we tell consumers how many calories are in food but we don’t tell them where they can burn them off.

Through StepJockey, we are offering the opportunity to put that right.

SD – How does StepJockey work?

StepJockey is incredibly simple. We provide people with prompts to nudge them to use the stairs more so that they can seamlessly build physical activity into their working day. We do this through a combination of a free smartphone app that can be used with our NFC-enabled and QR-code scannable Smart Signs to help people track their climbs and calorie burn.

We also gamify stair climbing, offering businesses a way to engage a significant proportion of their workforce with their health. Research shows that stair climbing engages overweight, inactive people and women the most.

SD – What are the user benefits?

Starting with the obvious – climbing stairs burns more calories than taking the lift. In fact it burns more calories than jogging – about a calorie for every 10 steps. Stair climbing is a very easy exercise for people who are naturally put off traditional sports that require Lycra or waterproofs so it engages far more people than traditional exercise regimes.

Beyond calorie burn the research shows that climbing the stairs for just seven minutes a day can halve the risk of a heart attack over 10 years. Climbing just eight flights of stairs a day lowers average early mortality risk by 33%. Just two minutes extra stair climbing a day is enough to stop average middle age weight gain.

And in fact, although climbing down the stairs burns fewer calories, the jarring action helps strengthen the bones which can help reduce the risk of osteoporosis.

SD – How does StepJockey differ from other companies in this space?

We’re unique in a few ways. First of all we’re evidence-based and we were seed-funded by the Department of Health when it ran a health tech innovation competition.

Second, we’re both a tech product and a very basic environmental intervention in the form of stylish signs. The magic comes in combining the two with some behavioural psychology to jolt people out of their lift-dominated routine and engage them with the physical world a bit more.

Third, in terms of the technology, we don’t use pedometers or gyroscopes to measure activity. We base it on the real data measured from people’s stair use and their own personal demographics. Our calculations are based on trials of stair climbing calorie burn funded through the initial DH grant. So we’re pretty confident that we’re providing people with as perfect a measure of their calorie burn as possible.

SD – What do you see as your biggest challenges for StepJockey?

We’ve learnt a lot from our users and the data we collect from stair climbing challenges.

Some people find out about the stair climbing initiatives and really go for it, taking the challenges extra-seriously and really putting in added time on the stairs. But for most people it’s a case of fitting it in to their regular work-day regime – swapping the lift for the stairs in the morning, at lunchtime and home time. We try to encourage that steady, habitual climbing as that’s the best way to cement long term behaviour change.

We’ve worked hard to get the incentives right, so that we’re not just rewarding the “winners”, but also giving extra motivation to those who are consistent climbers, and those who need a bit of a hand up to keep them moving. I think it’s fair to say that when it comes to motivating stair use we are now genuine experts!

SD – What do you see the digital health landscape being in 2020?

I think in the next four years we’ll see wearables improve and become as ubiquitous as Smartphones are now. If the user experience can be got right and the price affordable, we’ll see mass uptake which can only further help people track their health and act upon it. 

SD – Why should people vote for StepJockey?

Undoubtedly there’s loads of great health technology out there. We think we should win the Breakout Award because we really have broken out. Our crowdsourcing approach means that ordinary people worldwide have labelled nearly 9,000 stairs for calorie burn in 110 countries. This week we passed the 5 million calories burned mark on our stair climbing totalizer.

Stair climbing is such a simple thing to do, and the health benefits are well-known in decades worth of research literature to such an extent that stair prompts are recommended by NICE in the UK and the CDC in the US. We hope people will vote for us for helping to make that happen.

SD – How do people find out more information?

Go to our website www.stepjockey.com where you can find out details of getting the free signs and app, as well as a “ROI” calculator for companies to work out how we can help them. Or give us a call on 0203 397 8377 – we love to talk.

SD – thanks for your time

My pleasure.

Click http://on.fb.me/24Fxq8m to vote for Paul and StepJockey

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