Health tech innovator launches new enterprise solution to address digestive health issues

Darlene Higbee-Clarkin is a long-time tech innovator who discovered the world of holistic nutrition when her father got sick — and ultimately lost his life — after being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

Watching her father decline from the effects of the disease (including having his leg amputated and suffering a series of strokes) made Darlene acutely aware of her own health, and compelled her to find out how she could empower herself to take control of her well-being. Although her father took his medication, and heeded the advice of his care team, he never changed his diet or investigated other ways to help his condition. Darlene instinctively knew that changes in the way he lived, beyond what he was already doing, could have changed the situation for her dad. With this instinct as her guide, she embarked on her journey to becoming a Registered Holistic Nutritionist (RHN).

As she was immersed in her studies, Darlene’s tech brain was still going full tilt. The track in her head just kept saying “everyone needs to know about this stuff!” This is where her technical expertise, and her newly discovered love and knowledge of nutrition intersected.

“I saw that, with my background, I could build something extremely different and unique. I could get nutritional information to the masses pretty easily, and make it affordable for all,” she says.

She enlisted the help of her teacher, Orsha Magyar, an RHN with a background in biopsychology and neuroscience, and established her first tech nutrition venture, WholeLife Holistic Nutrition. The company embarked on a mission to bridge the gap between Western medicine and holistic nutrition, integrating tech into the mix, building a website and a series of smartphone apps to give people access to nutrition advice at their fingertips.

WholeLife Holistic Nutrition brought together top quality health food products, supplements, authors, practitioners, health services, and research. They developed a web application (mywholelife.ca “Free Personal Health Assessment”) and produced three mobile consumer apps:

• Quick Tips: a database of over 500 nutrition and lifestyle quick tips on preventative health, health conditions, popular diets and more.
• Blood Sugar: the latest scientific research on diet, supplements and lifestyle to help achieve optimum blood sugar balance.
• Weight Management: a tool to help users achieve optimal body weight using holistic nutrition.

KORE Digital Health Therapeutics
KORE Digital Health Therapeutics (formerly WholeLife HealthTech) employs a similar platform and similar technologies as WholeLife Holistic Nutrition, but is a unique new brand that represents a new direction for Darlene and her team.

KORE is on mission to help organizations empower their people to take control of their gut health, addressing the fact that health costs related to digestive diseases have grown exponentially in North America year after year. The rebrand and refocus was the result of recognizing a need for this technology to address gut health issues, as well as the team’s personal passions around digestive health conditions and disease.

KORE Digital Health Technologies brings together science-based advice (validated by dietitians, medical researchers and health organizations) and self-management tools to offer mobile access to evidence-based therapy for enterprise users.

This comprehensive solution will help organizations keep their employees and members healthy, reduce sick days, and save money on health care costs over the long-term. The KORE platform offers users access to their award-winning MyHealthyGut app, which includes:

• A wealth of general information about the digestive system.
• Access to a therapeutic program for individuals with Celiac Disease.
• Access to education and lifestyle recommendations for Gluten-Free living.

The future of KORE is exciting, with steps being made towards supporting increased  scalability, performance, agility, efficiency and reusability for organizations and enterprise users.

What’s coming?

• Additional therapeutic programs addressing Crohn’s & Colitis (IBD), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Digestive Health, Colon Cancer, Gut + Brain Connection and Skin Disorders.
• A new interface design and user experience journey.
• A Health Coach bot.
• Customized push notifications and messaging including daily motivational tips, news & alerts, exclusive blogs, news, research, & offers.