After finding that obese and overweight employees on average represent 60 percent of a company’s population, sports medicine physician Renato Romani wanted to make a change.

“Weight has a strong correlation with healthcare costs,” Romani said. “The average annual medical claim cost per 100 employees is $51,019 for obese populations and $7,503 for non-obese populations.”

A native of Brazil, Romani moved to the United States in 2010 to pursue his Executive MBA at the University of Minnesota. When he moved to Madison with his family in 2015, he founded Easy Way to Health, a company with a mission to improve corporate wellness.

“I was weighing myself after a shower and complaining about the numbers that showed up,” Romani said. “If the scale just told me I am on track and doing okay, it would be enough.”

He then realized that if he could make a scale that provided trend data instead of numbers, he could motivate the average person to implement and stick with a fitness plan.

Romani created The WOA System™, a cloud-computer platform that predicts future weight trends two weeks in advance through an algorithm that tracks human oscillation. The display shows your two-week weight trend via the “change-o-meter,” dictating if you’re losing weight too quickly or slowly, maintaining weight or gaining weight.

The patented system integrates a network of public Wi-Fi scales, an app that designs custom programs to guide people to lose weight at their unique pace and a website where corporate clients can track the results of their anonymously clustered group users.

According to Romani, the system is 35-50 percent cheaper than current corporate wellness programs. Companies lease the scales and displays at $2.99 per employee per year, and they can purchase add-on services for wellness consultation and healthcare cost reduction.

The system not only helps individuals lose weight but also reports to the company how the group is evolving and the healthcare costs the company is saving.

Easy Way to Health is currently self-funded. Romani is looking for a business partner that is willing to invest in the company and the WOA System™ and is passionate about health and wellness.

The company is still in a research and development phase but will start product roll-out soon.

“If we change our behavior toward better health, the pounds will fall off,” Romani said. “The WOA System™ will understand if today you are on the right track to reach your future goals.”