We sat down with Reso Health Co-Founder, Dermot O'Riordan to learn more about his career in the pharmaceutical industry, launching Reso Health and what you can expect from Reso Health in the future.
Together, Dermot O'Riordan and Co-Founder Ken O'Shea are working to bring the benefits of high-performance nutrition to the workplace. With over 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience across product formulation and commercialisation, Dermot is confident they can bring pharmaceutical levels of science and control to multivitamins.
Can you tell us more about your background?
Science and maths came easily to me in school so I studied Chemistry in CIT, and got my first job with GSK in Cork, sampling for the R&D Lab. I quickly realised the lab life didn’t suit me so moved to a production role with Pfizer in Dublin. After two years in the big smoke, I made a plan to move back to Cork but a role came up in Waterford with EirGen Pharma that was too good to turn down. What I thought would be a two year stay in the sunny South East, ended up being 14+ years. I arrived a boy racer and now I’m married with 4 kids that support the Deise, not the original plan but I’m pretty happy with how things turned out!
EirGen was a real education, both academic and practical, learning how fast start-ups need to move to stay alive, the opportunities that need to be embraced, how to push through the hard times, and how to have fun with the people you work with. It gave me the confidence and desire to start my own adventure, which I did with Ken in 2021, starting Reso Health, where the goal is to bring the benefits of high-performance nutrition to the workplace. Our scientific backgrounds are very complimentary with Ken being an expert in product formulation and my experience with commercialisation, so we’re confident we can bring pharmaceutical levels of science and control to multivitamins.
What is the question you are asked most by customers?
There is both an employee and an employer perspective here.
Employee - What’s wrong with the one I’m getting from the supermarket?
What we learned from our years of pharmaceutical development is that product dosage is variable to the individual due to differences in demographics, diets and lifestyles. The same goes for the vitamins you take, and while some companies are trying to make them more personalised, the products are just not good enough to keep up with the speed of life today. Our technology lets customers benefit from their health data, by generating a truly personalised supplement drink that gives your body what it wants and what you need to achieve your health.
Employer – How can we use supplements to help our people stay healthy at work?
To effectively manage personal stress and energy, it is important to manage what we consume. Products with poor nutritional content like excessive sugar, caffeinated drinks, oily food etc., are often the prime stimulants of headaches and fatigue.
Ireland ranks among the worst in Europe for employee burnout, and employees are unlikely to consider themselves as thriving in the workplace. By providing immediate access to precision nutrition, we can improve cognition, energy, and resilience levels, resulting in healthier, happier, and more productive employees, benefitting both the employee and employer.
Can you tell us more about how Reso Health works?
At Reso, we’re bringing the Lego approach to multivitamins. We’ve broken down the standard multivitamin into individual essential vitamins, minerals and flavours, making it easy for our customers to build a product that works for them when they need it most.
Our personalisation platform converts your health status, goals, demographics and lifestyle into an individual multivitamin recipe, which is then prepared by our dispensing machine as a tasty supplement drink, ready to enjoy in a range of flavours.
The service will initially be offered as part of employee wellbeing programmes, providing employees with a real-time solution to help with issues including anxiety, energy, immunity, or brain fog, as well as overall health and wellbeing. With the move to a four-day working week gathering evidence on its benefits, we see the workplace transitioning from routine day-to-day activities to becoming more focused on high performance team collaborations. We believe these environments will benefit enormously from a scientific approach to nutrition, as is currently embraced in the world of high performance sports, which is exactly what Reso Health are building to fuel the future of work.
What does a typical day look like for you in Reso Health?
The day normally starts around 06:00 when I get a head start on what needs to be done for the day before the kids wake up. Then it’s a healthy breakfast and daily vitamins before heading into the office for 08:30. I’m not a big coffee drinker so I find that my vitamin B-complex and essential metals supplement gives me the energy to prepare for the morning.
Once in the office we align on priorities and address anything that came up overnight. The week is split into three focus areas; the business, the product and the customer, so that we are addressing the key deliverables to achieve our goals, while always keeping an eye on what’s happening in the industry and with our customers that we may need to adapt.
I normally finish in the office at 17:00 and get some exercise in where possible, then it’s home for dinner, kid’s activities, and family time. Then I square away the day and prepare for tomorrow. I’ve kept a journal since we started, that I fill in every night to keep track of what has happened. It’s great to read back on previous entries and reflect on how we’ve grown, especially in the weeks when you feel you’re going backwards.
So far, what is the best thing about being part of Reso Health?
Without a doubt, it’s the learning curve with a new business. I’ve always liked to challenge myself during my career, so once I became comfortable in a position, I knew it was time to change things up by moving to a position to appreciate the different aspects of a business. Eirgen was great for this, and I had worked in five different management positions before I decided to take the leap with Reso.
It’s also building something you really believe will make a difference in how people work and cope with the different daily challenges that are thrown their way. We got really good feedback from HR Directors and employees alike so far and we’re loving the challenge of building these needs into the Reso Health service.
What's coming up next for you?
Things are pretty exciting in Reso at the moment with some big news that we’re hoping to release over the next couple of weeks. We’re working with experts in Sports Nutrition to help us build a field study test that will show the science behind the products we’re developing and how they can help professionals in the workplace. We’ll commence testing on the product in the Spring, and that’ll be a big milestone for us. We’re also planning on additions to the team this year to help with product design and marketing.
How can you add Reso Health's personalised supplements to your healthcare package?
Contact us or visit our website homepage to learn more
Comments