By Matthew Brady 
HLTH Europe wasn’t just a forum for European startups; some participants had travelled from across the globe to attend Europe’s largest healthcare innovation event — including Leeuwin Glosz, Co-founder and CEO of Convalesce Labs. Glosz kindly agreed to an interview by the tranquil lakeside at the RAI Amsterdam conference venue, with ample coffee on hand, where he shared more about his startup — and why he had journeyed over 6,500 miles from Southeast Asia to be there.
Convalesce Labs is a cross-functional pre-seed startup based in Singapore, incubated within the National University of Singapore’s BLOCK71 innovation ecosystem. Founded by a 10-member team of clinicians, computer scientists, and product strategists, and co-designed with over 20 youth contributors, the company is developing a dual-stack platform that serves both clinical institutions and community-based mental health users.
The startup’s core innovation lies in integrating multimodal data, including wearable signals, journaling activity, social and contextual patterns, electronic health records, and genomic information, into a machine learning engine that uses probabilistic and temporal modelling. This system generates diagnostic insights, risk stratification that support clinicians in delivering earlier, more accurate, and context-aware diagnoses.
But that’s not all. “We’ll run the data through a digital twin of the patient to simulate various treatments and identify which medications or therapies are most likely to work for that individual profile,” CEO and co-founder Glosz shared. “Imagine your doctor prescribing medication and saying, ‘Come back in two weeks if it doesn’t work.’ Instead of relying on trial and error, a virtual simulation has already tested it behind the scenes—helping the doctor choose the option with the highest likelihood of success with minimal side effects.
Convalesce Labs is also exploring another direction: using gamification to support mental wellbeing. “We’re focusing on young people,” Glosz explained, “drawing from my experience working with mental health patients in community settings in both Australia and Singapore. Our goal is to gamify personal growth and mental wellbeing in a way that’s social, engaging, and accessible.”
He emphasised that the app is deliberately not positioned as a traditional mental health tool. “If it’s branded as a mental health app, young people won’t use it. They don’t want their friends or family to know they’re using something associated with mental health. That stigma is still very real.”
Most existing apps tend to be overly clinical, highly technical, and quite niche—something young people often find off-putting, Glosz continued. “This is why churn rates are so high: users try the app, feel a bit better after a week, then stop using it—only for the problems to return. We’re aiming to build a more sustainable solution by creating an entire ecosystem of global partners.”
These partners could include familiar brands like Starbucks, Lush, Spotify, or Decathlon, offering real-world rewards to encourage healthier lifestyle choices. Glosz likened the concept to Sweatcoin—the app that turns walking into rewards—but with a broader focus on reinforcing positive behavioural habits.
“Our app integrates with wearables and uses AI to personalise challenges based on user behaviour. If someone enjoys swimming, for example, we can encourage that activity and offer rewards in return, creating a cycle of positive behaviour reinforcement that supports mental and physical wellbeing.”
Addressing concerns about data privacy, he clarified that all medical data in Singapore is stored securely on local servers approved by the Ministry of Health or relevant regulatory bodies. “We don’t store sensitive data on random servers around the world,” he emphasised.
Partnering with patients and providers
Patients play a central role in co-designing the Convalesce app. So far, the company has on boarded over 1,000 users through a co-creation approach that began with just 100 initial participants. “They’re genuinely excited to be part of the product development,” he said. “They’re telling their friends — word of mouth is spreading.”
This sense of ownership over mental health and wellbeing is rare in Singapore, where solutions are typically developed by professionals for young people, rather than with them. “The idea of co-creation is still quite foreign here,” he explained.
Convalesce Labs is also engaging national healthcare networks in Singapore to co-develop, validate, and implement.
Looking ahead, the startup aims to broaden its focus beyond mental health to include neuropsychiatric and physical health conditions affecting young people. “We’re interested in areas like neuropsychiatry, dementia, and Huntington’s disease — the rarer conditions that often go underserved,” he explained. “We also want to explore how we can better support the physical health of young people, especially given how closely it’s linked to mental wellbeing, particularly in regions where obesity is a major issue.”
With ambitions beyond Singapore, Convalesce Labs is setting its sights on the global stage. “Wherever you are, mental health doesn’t stop at your borders,” he said. By taking part in HLTH Europe in Amsterdam, the team is embracing the opportunity to exchange ideas and insights with international peers. “Singapore is actually quite forward-thinking — it has already implemented AI-driven tools and digital health technologies that many European startups are only just beginning to explore,” Glosz concluded.
Convalesce Labs represents a new wave of mental health innovation—one that’s patient-powered, data-driven, and globally minded. And with mental wellbeing rising on the global agenda, their journey seems only just beginning.
Dmitry Kaminskiy