From lost productivity, recruitment costs to mounting sick pay, work-related ill health costs businesses a hefty £85bn every year.
With long-term health issues cited as the most common reason one in five adults are out of work, Emma-Louise Fusari, a registered nurse turned solo welltech founder, is on a mission to change those stats through In-House Health, the workplace wellbeing platform she launched in 2018.
The platform combines healthcare expertise with predictive technology to help businesses “establish and eliminate” the root causes of what’s really making their employees unhealthy at work, alongside practical measures to tackle them.
“Not only do I want to help one million employees to stay healthy and in work, I also believe that the work I’m doing through In-House Health helps everyone in society,” Emma-Louise Fusari, founder of In-House Health, tells Prolific North.
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“The knock-on effect is that we’re reducing the risk of long-term health conditions, and therefore reducing the risk of people not just needing primary care, but secondary care. So we’re reducing the burden on the NHS but we’re also helping organisations to become more profitable while keeping people healthy and at work.”
In-House Health “bridges the gap” between traditional occupational health and fluffier wellbeing initiatives. Instead of one-off perks or reactive support, it looks at the full picture of employee health and assesses how a business is set up to support its people.
And her passion for shaking up workplace wellbeing hasn’t gone unnoticed. She recently won the 2026 Havas Business Boost competition, which supports underrepresented founders across the North of England, securing £150,000 and tailored support to help scale the business.
“I still can’t believe I won. It will not only bring investment in for further tech development, but will also give me marketing support for a year from a global marketing agency. Money can’t buy that stuff! It’s really going to help with the scale-up journey.”
But she is more than candid about the reality of founder life behind the scenes. Pointing to her nurse’s uniform, she explains the delicate juggle of managing a busy day job as a clinical nurse adviser while bootstrapping her business.
“It’s not been easy. There’s a lot of stigma around having a job as a founder but I didn’t have a salary for three years. I’m not rich by any means but I believe in what I’m building,” she explains. “The only way to do that is to get money in to pay for my bills. And I’ve found that.”
But those types of challenges are nothing new to Fusari. They go back to the experiences that shaped her early life, long before setting up In-House Health and first set her on the path to becoming a nurse.
From a council estate in Glasgow to life as a nurse
Becoming a registered nurse and eventually a welltech founder wasn’t quite Fusari’s idea of a dream job growing up.
With early ambitions to live the glam popstar life like fellow ginger and Spice Girls star Geri Halliwell, her path took a different turn when she moved to Manchester around 28 years ago, swapping a life behind the microphone for stethoscopes instead.
“I’ve been a nurse for 24 years this year. At times it doesn’t seem like that long but other times it seems like a life sentence,” she teases. “I became a nurse because I couldn’t be a pop star. It was the number two dream.”
But behind those jokes sits a much more personal story. Looking back on her early years growing up on a council estate in Glasgow, she was just 11 when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Six months later, her dad suffered a major heart attack and “nearly died”.
He survived, but spent the rest of his life living with disability, something she says was made harder by their socioeconomic circumstances.
“He couldn’t advocate for better health outcomes. He never asked for support. I saw that in my early diabetes life as well.”
Now, as a “fierce health advocate”, she wants to close the gaps in healthcare she saw growing up and give a “voice” to people like her dad — and even her younger self.
“My dad had stressful jobs at the time, he worked in a bookies without the fancy computers they have now. That environment, as well as having a Glaswegian lifestyle, is one of the reasons I became a nurse.”
From NHS whistleblower to founder
Spending much of her career as a frontline nurse over the past two decades, she’s worked directly with patients supporting everything from chronic disease management to public health screening.
But over time, “red tape and bureaucracy” pushed her to a breaking point, eventually leading her to leave her role and, at times, having to become an NHS whistleblower.
“I’ve had to do it multiple times in my career due to poor care and poor practice that people like to turn a blind eye to – except me. I’m the one that ends up as the disruptor. But I like to see myself as a disruptor for good now.”
Disillusioned with a system she says often treats the aftermath of serious events like heart attacks or strokes when it’s already “too late”, she became increasingly focused on prevention instead with a desire to make a difference to people’s health from the very start.
“Prevention is my thing. In my nursing role, I did love the public health stuff around things like screenings and immunisations. So, I decided to leave the NHS, which was 10 years ago, this year.”
After leaving the NHS, she briefly worked as a childminder before stumbling across the corporate wellbeing sector, but she quickly spotted familiar problems.
“What I found was that exact same stick and plaster approach that the NHS has, providing wellbeing initiatives that are reactive, fluffy and not measured in any meaningful way.
“But most importantly, they’re not improving anyone’s health outcomes. They don’t have any financial benefit for the businesses investing in them. I thought: ‘There has to be a better way where everyone can win?’”
How In-House Health works – and the big pivot
That thinking became the foundation for In-House Health. The platform works in four steps: it measures what is going on in a business, evaluates the findings, helps businesses make changes, and then tracks what improves over time.
It starts with an audit, looking at how a business actually operates day to day, from its processes and culture to the support it offers staff. It highlights what is working, what is missing, and provides practical strategies companies can use to improve.
The more in-depth ‘Meta programme’ builds on this, adding individual employee health checks across both physical and mental health.
Employees receive private reports with personalised recommendations, while businesses get an anonymised overview of trends across their workforce, from stress levels to sleep patterns, along with clear guidance on what is driving those issues and how to address them.
“Fundamentally, it is using health data and operational data to understand where the problems are and how they are not just affecting people, but affecting your business,” she explains.
Although she initially targeted the digital and tech sector, citing “real problems” in that industry, she admits she couldn’t get “any traction at all”. That’s when she made the decision to pivot.
Drawing on her own background as a nurse, she instead refocused the platform to target the health and social care workforce.
And it proved to be a turning point, leading to a chunk of grant funding through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and a collaboration with the University of Manchester to start developing a predictive health data model for In-House Health.
While the platform’s ‘prevention’ side currently relies on data analytics, her ambition is to use AI and machine learning to further develop the model, identifying workplace risks early on and showing businesses what could happen if those risks aren’t addressed.
The future
Describing the platform as 70% service and 30% tech currently, she hopes to flip that balance in the near future, while remaining “adamant” that the service element stays.
“For me, it is about long-term change and embedding healthy practices. It’s not a quick fix. It’s not a magic wand. So in order to do that, you do need to hold people’s hand through that journey. Technology just isn’t there yet to do that, so the consultancy piece is still important.”
And after years of bootstrapping through credit cards, reinvesting any revenue she gets in and relying on grant support, Fusari describes winning the Havas Business Boost competition as a pivotal moment for the future of In-House Health.
Looking ahead, she is firmly focused on scaling the platform with the extra funds and marketing support, building out its predictive AI capabilities, integrating Care Quality Commission (CQC) reporting, and adding more data on women to ensure support is tailored, not “generic”.
And the ultimate goal is to bring 10 to 20 businesses on board in the next phase of growth.
“I’ve kissed a lot of frogs to get to this point. I feel like I’ve already got product market fit, I’ve generated revenue from them, and the next step is just going out and educating that sector about what we have here.”
And after years of graft, she believes it finally feels like things are starting to shift.
“For so long, I’ve tried to build a business on determination alone. If there was an award for that, I would probably win that as well! But now I’ve got some money in, it is great.
“You’ve just got to do what you believe in, run with it, and hope that it works out in the end. And I believe in it.”
