Innovation

To learn more about the Veri innovation and its contribution to the UN SDGs, we interviewed Frans Lehmusvaara, one of Veri's co-founders. The idea for Veri arose in Finland in 2020 from one of the founder’s personal encounters with illness (Veri, 2024) and desire from other co-founders to make an impact in the world. They felt frustration and a lack of agency around the metabolic health crisis – metabolism is the sum of the chemical processes in the human body that are necessary to live, and metabolic health refers to how efficiently your metabolism works (Veri, 2024) – so they set out to solve it (Veri, 2024).

Veri's innovation came from taking a pre-existing medical device for diabetics, a wearable glucose sensor, and expanding its functionality and use case to people who did not have diabetes but wanted to improve their health (F. Lehmusvaara, personal communication, October 3, 2024). Through their product, Veri is able to give feedback and personalized advice to improve the health of the user. Additionally, Veri’s product creates a loop that inspires changes in habits by allowing users to set goals, analyse their progress, and see results (F. Lehmusvaara, personal communication, October 3, 2024).

Veri mainly contributes to SDG 3, Good Health and Wellbeing, by helping people track glucose, understand metabolism, and improve their health through personalized instruction. It also supports SDG 17 through partnerships between business, academia and public health organizations, like the CDC. Lastly, it contributes to SDG 10, Reduced Inequalities, by making glucose monitoring and healthcare advice accessible to more people, not just those with diabetes.  

Inspiration

The co-founder of Veri we interviewed, Frans Lehmusvaara, stated that the Veri innovation was inspired by the founding team's experiences related to health issues, statistics related with the metabolic health crisis today and “drive to make an impact” (F. Lehmusvaara, personal communication, October 3, 2024). Frans stated that “In the US, every third person is pre-diabetic. 88% of adults have some kind of degree of metabolic dysfunction, such as insulin resistance, high cholesterol, or blood pressure issues. It's a difficult problem to tackle, involving eating habits, motivation, and exercise” (F. Lehmusvaara, October 3, 2024). It was also highlighted that “the standards people follow today do not lead to the expected impact, as people are not able to change their eating habits using traditional methods such as the “colouring model”, since behavioural change is complex and much more about psychology" (F. Lehmusvaara, October 3, 2024).  

Overall impact

The Veri innovation has had short-term effects and is likely to have long-term effects, although this is not possible to assess yet.

In the short term, the innovations created by the Veri team have resulted in healthier lives for a majority of its 40,000 customers (F. Lehmusvaara, personal communication, October 3, 2024). As noted by Frans, Veri aims to help all people improve metabolic health, not just those with diabetes. In two studies completed by Veri of its customers, 72% of Veri members saw their glucose improve, and 74% of members lost weight (Veri, 2024d). Both studies were completed over a six-month time frame (Veri, 2024d) and involved Veri users from a variety of different backgrounds.

Given that Veri has existed for only four years, the long-term effects of the innovation are yet to be seen. However, the acquisition of Veri by ŌURA shows that ŌURA envisions a future where metabolic health is a critical aspect of achieving a healthy life for its members. As innovations created by Veri are absorbed into the ŌURA product and its millions of users, the long-term effects can be better gauged.  

Business benefit

Despite being founded only in 2020, the innovations created by the Veri team have generated significant business benefits from both partnership and financial perspectives. Veri’s partnerships have been growing rapidly, with more health professionals, content creators, and media platforms raising awareness about Veri. Health professionals, in particular, have integrated Veri into their practice to improve visibility into their clients' metabolic health (F. Lehmusvaara, personal communication, October 3, 2024).

From a financial standpoint, Veri’s revenue has grown consistently since its inception in 2020 to 4.3 million euros in 2022 (Fig.1; Finder, 2024).

In September 2024, it was announced that ŌURA had acquired Veri (Veri, 2024a). "Metabolic health is a top priority for ŌURA’s members, with 97% expressing interest in understanding how their food choices affect their well-being" (Veri, 2024a). Moving forward, the Veri team will join ŌURA to bring advanced metabolic health capabilities as part of ŌURA’s value proposition (Veri, 2024a). Though specifics of the deal were not made public, the acquisition of Veri by ŌURA, a company valued at over $2.5 billion (Business Wire, 2024), signifies their expectation that Veri’s innovations will be a catalyst for driving further growth at ŌURA.  

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Social and environmental benefit

Veri’s goal is to make an impact on the way people think. As stated by Frans Lehmusvaara (October 3, 2024) during our interview, Veri is “not interested in where you are; the aim is to move people in a better direction and a healthier life”.

Life expectancy is twice as high as it was in 1920, but humanity’s metabolic health has never been worse (Veri, 2024c). More than half of the world is predicted to be overweight or obese by 2035, and one out of ten people globally is living with a form of diabetes today (Veri, 2024c). A key driver of these alarming statistics is that human lifestyle has become metabolically unsustainable (Veri, 2024c).

For humanity to get back on track and reverse the damage caused by the metabolic health crisis, individuals need to make “small day-to-day lifestyle shifts” (Veri, 2024c) and “take charge of [their] metabolic health” (Veri, 2024c). The innovations by Veri provide customers the ability not only to gain insight into their metabolic health but also to receive actionable advice to improve it.

Healthy people (SDG #3) are the backbone of pursuing and achieving the sixteen other SDGs set out by the United Nations. Heath is a pressing challenge in itself and without healthy people, solving the other challenges faced by society will be even more difficult than it is now. Veri directly contributes to improving the health and well-being of people (SDG #3). For this innovation to come to fruition, it was necessary to partner with different sectors of society, the business side, Veri, academic institutions (several universities), and governmental organizations (such as the CDC), a contribution to SDG #17, partnerships for the goals. Veri also helps to some degree to reduce inequality, specifically when it concerns access to information about health and health guidance, bringing to more people a personalized health monitoring and improvement programme often only accessible through medical care that has been more tailored to diabetics and not those with other forms of insulin resistance or metabolic issues in a preventative manner (SDG #10).

Interview

Frans Lehmusvaara, Co-founder & CTO