Dr Shane Lowe has built his career on using technology to prevent and reduce muscle, bone, and joint pain. For over a decade, he has worked at the intersection of biomechanics, AI, and preventative health – from academic research predicting future musculoskeletal issues in aging adults to optimising performance for elite athletes.
Shane co-founded Vitrue Health to bring this same science to the global workforce. Today, Vitrue’s VIDA platform enables organisations worldwide to spot risks early, cut absence, and tackle one of the biggest hidden costs in business: musculoskeletal pain. Shane is on a mission to eliminate back and joint pain for millions.
We are delighted that Shane will be speaking at the London event during our Wellbeing at Work Summit UK 2025. We caught up with him to find out how he’s feeling in the runup to the event.
Hi Shane, we are thrilled that you will be speaking at the Wellbeing at Work UK Summit in September. Our first and most important question is, how are you doing today?
I’m great, thanks – excited to be talking to you.
As a leader based in the region, what are the main challenges you are facing when it comes to employee wellbeing and mental health?
There are two sides to this for me. Firstly, we’re a company that develops technology to help other companies maximise the well-being and happiness of their employees. But on the flip side, I’m the CEO of a company myself and I’ve got an extremely hard-working team who I have responsibility for, and who I care a lot about keeping healthy and happy. On the first point, when we talk about our work with other companies, musculoskeletal well-being is crucial, but it’s just one part of a much wider set of issues that make up a person’s overall well-being. Building an approach where each element complements the others and treats the person as a whole is a real challenge. And internally, as a fast-growing company in London, we ask a lot of our team, so they absolutely deserve us taking care of their well-being. It’s a constant balancing act: enabling people to do their best work while making sure they don’t go too far.
What strategies have you seen developing over the past 6 months, both internally and externally, that are moving the dial on wellbeing in the workplace?
Partly because of technology advancements, we’re seeing a stronger spectrum approach – from proactive through to reactive. That means having safety nets in place if someone’s struggling, but also putting equal focus on prevention so people stay healthy in the first place. AI is probably the biggest enabler recently, and companies are having more success delivering that full spectrum. I do think that in physical health – and musculoskeletal health is our world – things have lagged behind a bit. In general, we still focus too much on reactivity. You’ve got PMI, but by the time someone uses it, the problem’s already there. Because of changes in the PMI world, the inflation everyone’s seeing and the question of whether the current model is affordable, we’re now seeing a bigger push, and more success for well-being leaders, in making the case for a full spectrum approach from prevention all the way through to cure.
Why is employee wellbeing so important to you personally?
I could talk about this all day. You owe it to your staff. You ask so much from them, so you have a responsibility to give back and take care of their well-being. It’s also important from a purely cold, hard balance sheet perspective, there’s so much evidence now that higher well-being means higher profits for a business. And lastly, with public healthcare systems under such strain, employers are being asked and expected to take a more active role in the health of the population. You can argue whether that’s right or wrong, but it’s true and it makes the role of well-being a huge responsibility.
What impact is AI having in your organisation and how are you managing that?
That’s such a big question it’s almost hard to answer. Internally, every single task being completed at Vitrue Health is, in some way, being touched by AI – whether it’s how our developers work, how we think through the problems we’re solving, how we train new staff, or how we analyse data to understand what’s working and what isn’t. AI is a multiplier in every way. And externally, AI has always been core to what we do. The power of data when it comes to predicting and personalising approaches to physical well-being is almost limitless. In our world, think of the difference in risk for back pain if you’re a golfer, a swimmer, you’ve got a new baby at home, or you commute to work by bus, by packed tube, by cycling, or walking – or if you’ve had back surgery in the past. People are unique, and so is their risk for musculoskeletal issues and the best way to maximise their physical well-being. AI opens so many doors to take advantage of that. A completely personalised approach for every person.
Other than AI, are there any challenges that you are seeing for the first time and how are you addressing them?
I guess the biggest one in our world is what’s happening with healthcare costs for employers. The more the responsibility for healthcare shifts to employers, the more we’re realising that duplicating a public healthcare approach – just paid for by employers – doesn’t make it any more viable. The kind of numbers we’re seeing – 15 to 30 percent inflation in claims and premiums – is rocket fuel for innovation. For us, that means shifting further away from a reactive model, turning that into a safety net, and focusing the vast majority of our effort on prevention.
What areas do you think employers should be focused on over the next 12 months?
Of course I’m biased, but when you look at all the data on the biggest impacts and issues in well-being, physical health needs new approaches. For too long, we’ve thought of things like back pain as inevitable. You hit your 40s, 50s, 60s, you get back pain, and you just live with it. That’s simply not true – the science doesn’t support it. But because of that mindset, we’ve been content to say, “Well, we’ve got strong insurance in place, so when someone needs physio, they’ll use it.”
As I mentioned earlier, we’re now realising that model isn’t affordable. We can’t just wait for people to get pain and then clean it up afterwards. By far, I think the biggest issue employers need to focus on is
closing that gap with a proper preventative strategy for physical health. Zooming out, you can’t treat mental health and physical health as totally separate, or look at financial well-being in isolation.
Do you feel that investment in employee wellbeing in the region is increasing or decreasing and is that a direct reflection on HR leaders’ increasing ability to demonstrate effective returns of their strategies to leadership?
That’s such a great question – and a complicated one. The focus on ROI has massively increased, and well-being leaders are much better at separating smoke and mirrors from genuine ROI. I have amazing conversations now on clinical efficacy with well-being leaders that I wasn’t having nearly as often in the earlier days. That’s getting them a better seat at the top table which is a hugely positive step. At the same time, if the overall pot of money is smaller, it’s hard to say investment is truly increasing. Would I like to see more investment? Absolutely. The stats on mental health, burnout, and the fact that 64% of people have musculoskeletal pain today show we need it. But I do feel optimistic because there’s been a really positive shift. It now has to be something you can show impact from, which means providers like us are being pushed to deliver genuine clinical or well-being outcomes and I think that can only be a good thing.
How has your organisation been leading the way?
In our office, we’ve got four values up on the wall – and the first one is ‘be scientific.’ Since the very beginning of Vitrue, our goal has been to lower musculoskeletal pain for millions of people. Of all the things we’ve talked about today, the only way to accomplish that is through clinical and scientific rigour doing something that actually works, proving the outcomes, and moving people along that spectrum
from reactive to proactive.
Musculoskeletal pain, including back issues, is so often preventable if you intervene early enough. But there’s been a huge gap, where people think, I just live with the pain until it’s so bad I have to ask for help. I think we’ve had real success in changing that culture in the companies we work with – often by adapting techniques used in professional sports – and helping well-being leaders instil a more proactive, preventative approach. That does mean employees themselves taking on some responsibility, but we can make that achievable for them.
There’s still a lot more we want to do, but I’m really proud of the approach we’ve taken – and of the tens of thousands of people across 34 countries who have lower rates of pain, or no pain at all today, because of their use of Vitrue.
Shane will be speaking at our London Summit takes place on 23rd September. Visit our London webpage for further details and to book your tickets.
Our Manchester Summit takes place on 25th September. To find out more about our Manchester Summit and book your tickets please visit our Mancherster webpage.
