Programme 1 : Skin Under Stress

There is a complex relationship between stress and skin health. Both acute and, more significantly, chronic stress can negatively affect skin health and also worsen many skin conditions.

We are looking for technologies (hardware or software) that will enable our clients to identify and subsequently state to their users that “on the balance of probability there is a strong chance that you are suffering from a continued high level of stress and that this is likely to be having a detrimental affect on your skin”. This could be based on the data received from their personal health related technology, e.g. smart watch/phone/connected scales/smart ring etc, or other hardware and/or software.

We are keen to identify existing technologies, technologies under development, or combined technologies from both direct, complimentary or adjacent industries that can recognise and potentially track stress indicators or read changes in the body’s stress chemical levels (such as cortisol) and highlight these in real time allowing the potential for indicating trends within the data.

Research and Development areas that may be relevant are advances in, but not exclusively, sleep tracking, anxiety tracking, weight, diet, blood sugar, tiredness and exhaustion, immune system, cortisol levels, trauma, blood pressure, mood tracking and digestion.