- Neurofit created an app that incorporates somatic exercises to help treat chronic stress.
- The company uses AI to help with tasks like coding and language translation.
- This article is part of “How AI Is Changing Everything: Small Business,” a series exploring how small businesses are using AI for success.
Whether it’s work or family-related pressures, an unexpected health scare, or a sudden life change like a big move, we all experience stress.
But there’s a big difference between short-term, acute stress and chronic stress, which accumulates over time and potentially affects physical health.
Many mindfulness apps are effective at addressing acute stress but may not be as helpful for chronic stress. Neurofit, a mental wellness app that focuses on movement, is trying to close this gap.
The app, developed by the husband-and-wife team Andrew and Loren Hogue, leverages neuroscience and what they call “nervous system fitness” to help users reduce stress and improve mental clarity through somatic exercises. Somatics is a field of movement studies and bodywork that focuses on the body’s physical perceptions and experiences, emphasizing conscious movements that increase the mind-body connection.
With just a three-person team, Neurofit relies on AI to deliver its program and engage users. The small business uses AI in three key ways: mental health coaching, app coding and development, and language translation.
Courtesy of Britt James/In The Flow Photography
Andrew Hogue, a serial entrepreneur with a background in software engineering, cofounded Neurofit in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when rates of anxiety and depression soared. Five years later, many people are still recovering from that collective trauma.
Loren Hogue, a former lawyer and a master somatic coach, underwent training and learned that chronic stress affects physical health just as much as mental health.
Neurofit uses neuroscience- and evidence-based methods to address chronic stress and burnout, anchoring its program on somatic movements and mindfulness activities proven to reduce stress.
The Neurofit app has a daily check-in function where users assess how they feel about different parts of their lives, including career and family, and securely collects this data to understand each user’s “stress fingerprint,” Andrew Hogue said.
The app compiles biometric data, such as heart rate and nervous system recovery, and combines this with information about each user’s stress profile and physiology to provide personalized guidance and insights. It analyzes a user’s unique stress patterns over time and tailors exercises and coaching to the individual’s needs.
Product development, coding, and translation help
Neurofit also uses AI for coding. Andrew Hogue used it to develop an app specifically for Apple Watches, something he’d never done despite his experience as a software engineer. He said AI reduced the learning curve, guiding him through the coding process to develop an Apple Watch app in just a few days to complement Neurofit’s existing iOS app.
Neurofit has also adopted AI to reach a global audience.
The company uses ChatGPT 3.0 — a generative AI tool that can create new content from virtually any source material — to translate mental health and wellness articles in the app’s content library into more than 40 different languages. The technology allows Neurofit to translate content faster and more affordably than using human translators, saving the company $1,500 to $2,000 for each language, Andrew said.
Lauren Houge said AI also helps Neurofit increase accessibility and equity.
“By driving down the cost of care, AI-driven tools are poised to serve far more diverse populations from anywhere, not just tech-savvy or privileged groups,” she said.
But adopting AI hasn’t been foolproof. The technology initially produced subpar language translations, but they improved over time with better data inputs. It experienced a similar problem with its content library, as ChatGPT 3.0 initially delivered lower-quality results as the team added more internal links, visuals, and graphics to its content pages. Andrew Hogue said these issues have been resolved over time.
It’s just another reminder that you can’t rely solely on AI tools; a human always should be in the loop.
The Hogues said it’s critical for small businesses new to AI to start with small test cases, look for repetitive tasks to easily automate, and use the technology to augment — rather than replace — human empathy and connection.
Loren Hogue added that ethical and privacy safeguards are nonnegotiable, especially in healthcare.
“Robust data protection needs to be built into every step, starting at the design phase, so users feel safe sharing biometric information,” she said.
Ultimately, they believe the potential for AI to have a positive effect on people’s mental health may outweigh the possible risks.
“We believe AI can transform mental health care into a more proactive, holistic, preventive, and personalized domain,” Loren Hogue said, “one that supports not only immediate mental and emotional well-being, but also long-term physiological resilience and longevity.”
