The Covid19 pandemic sent the whole world into a prolonged shutdown. Everything and everyone came to an abrupt halt. In all of this chaos, it was a massive challenge for people to reach out to healthcare institutions for care services—apart from COVID-19 and the entailing ailments—as most healthcare resources were focused on containing the fast-spreading and lethal virus.
This is where virtual wellness companies came to the rescue of people. Through virtual wellness platforms, people can easily reach out to various healthcare and wellness services related to mental health, fitness, nutrition, etc. It provides people with easy navigation to look for products and services they want to avail themselves of. They can also easily book online appointments or even receive services via telehealth.
It also lets the customer look through various providers offering the same service and choose what best suits their needs. Cyno is one such platform that enables companies to cater to their employees’ healthcare and wellness needs.
In the following interview, Peter Barbour, the Founder and CEO, tells us about the idea that led to the company’s inception and how it’s been successfully connecting corporations to quality healthcare providers.
Please brief our audience about your company, its mission, and the key aspects of its stronghold within the health and wellness space.
Cyno is a virtual corporate wellness marketplace that empowers corporations to offer easy access to various health & wellness services to their employees, whether they work in the office or at home. We are proud to work with some notable companies such as Shopify, Verafin, Illumiti, Clearly, Caring.com, and many other employee-focused companies!
Tell us more about your services and solutions which make your company stand out from the competition?
Cyno operates through partnerships with corporations that extend the wellness services listed on the platform to their employees. Companies pay us a flat monthly rate per employee, and in turn, receive access to live one-on-one and group virtual services. The employees gain full access to our platform, where they can book any of our wellness services with a wide range of providers.
A very important distinction that Cyno offers—from all other direct and indirect competitors—is that it is a platform marketplace that allows health and wellness companies or sole proprietors to list their virtual services to be made available to Cyno corporate wellness clients. The benefit that this structure provides is that it allows for Cyno to have a diverse offering of different providers in a wide variety of different health and wellness services. Cyno has over 80 different health and wellness providers currently on the platform.
Cyno is filling the gap of offering preventative wellness and allied health telehealth services. The services that fall under this category are:
- Mental Wellbeing
- Physical Fitness
- Nutrition Education
- Natural Health Advice
- Injury Rehabilitation
Cyno has a wide variety of wellness services on its platform, offered by a comprehensive network of 70+ providers. Examples of specific services within the above categories include offerings such as personal training, Pilates, yoga, meditation, mental health counselling, life coaching, Reiki Therapy, Naturopath, physiotherapy, fertility counselling, and much more.
What is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the global healthcare sector, and what challenges did you face during the initial phase of the pandemic?
While the pandemic had a terrible impact both on the health and economy of the world, it had the silver lining of forced progression of technology acceptance in the healthcare sector. Prior to the pandemic, people were much more hesitant to receive care via telehealth platforms; however, now that many have been forced to try it for the first time, many now prefer it!
With continuous development in technologies such as AI and big data, what is your prediction about the future of the healthcare sector pertaining to the health and wellness vertical?
My prediction is that personal health data ownership and control will increase in importance. People are now understanding the power of controlling their own data, and as a result, healthcare platforms and databases will need to be configured to accommodate for this ease of data transfer when the owner requests it.
As an established leader, what would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the health and wellness industry?
Starting a business in health care is tough! Unlike many other sectors where a quick minimum viable product (MVP) can be speedily produced and sent out to be tested and the idea validated, in healthcare, you need to first build a secure and private product before anyone is allowed to purchase it from you. This takes more time and capital to get off the ground. So, my advice would be to ensure that you have enough capital/runway to make sure you can get to market.
How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021?
In addition to continuing our current sales strategy, we will be working on strategic partnerships in the group benefits sector to allow for the broader distribution of our services.
About the Leader
Peter Barbour, the Founder and CEO of Cyno, has extensive experience in the fitness and wellness industry. He successfully sold his first business, ‘Salus Life Active Living’ in 2011 and started his second business, ‘Cyno’, in 2016 and has been able to flourish it since then. He achieved his Bachelor of Kinesiology (BScKin) degree from the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is now actively pursuing his Master of Business Administration degree from the Memorial University of Newfoundland to have a better understanding of how to seamlessly extend his business services to society at large.
