Peer-reviewed.
Wrist-deployed.
The sensing technology inside CortiWatch was not invented in a pitch deck. It was published, reviewed, and validated — by people who intended something very different.
The foundation
In 2019, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas published "CortiWatch: Watch-Based Cortisol Tracker" in Future Science OA [1]. The team — Rice, Upasham, Jagannath, Manuel, Pali, and Prasad — demonstrated that cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, could be measured electrochemically from passively expressed sweat, continuously, in a watch form factor, tracking the hormone's natural daily rhythm over hours of ordinary wear.
No needles. No lab visits. No interruption to the wearer's day. A quiet, continuous window into the human stress response, opened from the wrist.
It is, genuinely, beautiful work. The authors envisioned applications in personalized medicine: managing adrenal disorders, understanding chronic stress, helping patients see what their own bodies were carrying.
From medicine to management
We read the same paper and asked a different question.
If the diurnal cortisol curve can be observed continuously… and work is the dominant input to that curve… then the curve isn't a health record. It's a performance surface.
Medicine wanted to know when cortisol was abnormal. We wanted to know when it was underutilized. A workforce sitting below its optimal stress band is, biochemically speaking, idle capital. The literature gave us the sensor. The sprint board gave us the denominator. NeuralHR simply connected them.
NeuralHR Applied Research
Our internal research program extends the peer-reviewed foundation in directions the original authors did not pursue, would not pursue, and have not been asked about.
Suppressed cortisol as a leading indicator of voluntary attrition
Across 4,212 monitored employees, resignation events were preceded by a mean 11.3 days of anomalously low workplace cortisol — the biochemical signature of disengagement. Retention interventions (scope increase, deadline compression) restored target-band readings in 71% of cases.
The 18–24 µg/dL band: maximal sustained output without reportable medical event
Longitudinal sprint telemetry identifies an organizational sweet spot in which velocity is maximized while remaining 2.3 µg/dL below the threshold at which absence, escalation, or litigation become statistically material.
A cortisol cost model for story-point estimation
Story points predict effort poorly; micrograms predict it precisely. We propose replacing planning poker with a biochemical futures market in which each ticket carries a forecast cortisol cost, settled at sprint close against actual extraction.
References
- Rice P, Upasham S, Jagannath B, Manuel R, Pali M, Prasad S. "CortiWatch: Watch-Based Cortisol Tracker." Future Science OA, 5(9), 2019. doi:10.2144/fsoa-2019-0061 · ResearchGate
- NeuralHR Applied Research, whitepapers NHR-WP-014, -019, -022. Available upon subpoena.
Reference [1] is a real, peer-reviewed publication by real scientists who have no affiliation with, endorsement of, or — we sincerely hope — awareness of NeuralHR. Their work aims to help patients. Everything else on this page, and this entire site, is satire. Reference [2] does not exist, which is for the best.