During carb-laden lunches in the IBM cafeteria over 10 years ago, a master inventor and his colleagues decided they were eating too much. From this Pavlovian inspiration, Mike Paolini submitted a patent for a technology that coordinates an automatic wellness rebate program.
“As engineers, we like to be rewarded in what we do right,” explains Paolini. He says that the technology builds on a point-incentive system that encourages employees to buy and eat healthy foods. The patent details a micropayment network to buy food, which runs employees’ purchases against their health records. If the employee buys apples instead of Tootsie Rolls, then the system communicates with the employer’s payroll server to deliver a reward.
