“Olive isn’t just new a new addition to our suite of health services. It represents a fundamental shift from reactive to proactive care, which significantly improves health outcomes,” said Thomas Duvernoy, Allianz Care’s Head of Health and Protection Services.

The Olive programme, which was piloted last year to 27,000 staff members working for three inter-governmental organisations (IGO) across four continents, has three components, Allianz explains:

• Active prevention – Identifying those at risk of getting a chronic disease such as diabetes or heart disease, before those diseases have progressed. Data is gathered through on-site health screenings and the HealthSteps app.
• Proactive treatment – For any ‘at risk’ employees identified. Depending on their health status, support can range from attending talks by medical professionals, to being guided to the appropriate care and treatment where their progress is monitored.
• Empowered health and wellbeing – Empowering clients’ employees through a range of digital health and wellbeing tools where they can get relevant information, support, set personal health goals and even arrange team-wide fitness challenges.

“We wanted to take a more proactive, holistic and data-driven approach to healthcare. To give our group clients a more intelligent and effective way of caring for their staff,” said Duvernoy. “Having a physically and mentally healthy workforce is a priority for most organisations, and the need for digital support tools for mental health and wellbeing has never been more evident than in the current Covid-19 pandemic.”

Allianz’s rollout of the pilot programme gave IGO users access to a range of digital services, as well as on-site health screenings managed by Allianz Care physicians and nurses in three locations: Rome, Nairobi and Panama – where screening results were compared against the norm for each region and recommendations could be given. And the results of the pilot were very interesting indeed: of the 27,000 IGO staff who took part in the pilot programme, a significant number reported that they were unaware they may be facing health issues before taking part in the initiative.

“Many of us wouldn’t consider being screened for any conditions unless we felt unwell,” commented Duvernoy. “The truth is that many risk factors for the onset of disease are often left undetected. Preventive medicine is critical in combating the onset of, or further development of, disease; plus lifestyle plays a huge role in our overall health profile. Which is why Olive combines prevention, treatment and self-empowerment in one package.”