This Central Texas Technology Company Has A Lot Of Heart

Like most middle schoolers being introduced to running for the first time, Lillian Lewis used to have a hate-hate relationship with the sport. She didn’t see the point, couldn’t understand the significance, and almost always loathed the 10 minutes on the track that were required as part of weekly fitness testing at IDEA Kyle, the public charter school in Central Texas she attends.

The first time she ever lined up on the oval, she remembers feeling a paralyzing agony for what lay ahead, as if the diminishing clock would be a life sentence toward eternity. By the time she finished, she had barely run two laps – good for just over half a mile.

But nevertheless, Lewis kept running. Stubbornly at first, then with a lot more joy. Every Monday, she placed a black band on her wrist that tracked her heart rate. Bright colors like blue and yellow and red would appear, the result of a little more effort each time.

Soon enough, Lewis couldn’t wait to get out on the track. She understood what it meant to stay in the “blue” longer, to work into “yellow” and to go all-out for “red.” As she began to realize better health through physical activity, her mind began to shift.

Our goal is to impact as many lives as possible on a global level. We are not the movement. But we measure the movement in an effective way.

“I’ve learned that I can push myself further than I normally can,” said Lewis, now 14. “In the seventh grade, I wasn’t even able to finish. But now I know I can push myself further in the mile. I’m slowly chipping away at it.”

At the center of Lewis’s development has been a simple heart rate monitor, one among thousands that are now being used across IDEA and KIPP Public Schools in Texas, along with more in the Austin Independent School District, Pflugerville ISD and Hays ISD, innovated by Austin-area startup Interactive Health Technologies.

Central Texas schools aren’t the only landing spot for these devices, either, as the fitness trackers have landed inside physical education programs nationwide and globally through the Department of Defense Education Activity, a federal program which operates 161 schools in nine districts over 11 foreign countries, seven states and two U.S. territories.

“It’s taken a village to get where we are,” said Jenn Ohlson, the company’s founder and CEO.

Today, the Austin-based technologies company serves over 11,000 schools across the U.S. and in 36 nations globally, though its heartbeat remains in Central Texas.

In April, IHT has plans to launch its newest monitors nationwide.

The Origins Of IHT

The 54-year-old Ohlson didn’t set out to build a technology company. A former NCAA Division I athlete in track and field and soccer at George Mason, she graduated with a degree in communications, parlaying that success into a job in television news in the late 1990s.

After moving to Austin in 2002 to work at KXAN as a sports reporter, she later wrote a book in 2007 titled ‘Every Town Needs A Trail,’ which highlights the connection between Central Texas residents and the Lady Bird Lake trailhead.

Ohlson’s storytelling continued in 2010 when she raised multiple rounds of funding for a documentary centered around the inequities in health for children, titled ‘Health Needs A Hero.’ During development of the film – wherein she received funding from the Dell Corporation, H-E-B and the St. David’s Healthcare System, among others – she created the PE 3 Foundation, buoyed in part by school administrators in San Antonio who saw the value in her project. Ohlson’s foundation created a new physical exercise curriculum which later was approved for use statewide by the Texas Education Agency.

Her research, which included the gathering of available public data, led her to find that over 1,000 students in the San Antonio School District had a body mass index over 50, which was an indication of severe obesity. Ohlson felt at that time that was no outlier. That single report led her to found the early beginnings of her company, which then manifested in the production of a chest monitor. Four years later, in partnership with a commercial deal she secured with adidas, Ohlson developed the first version of the wrist monitors in 2015. The products in their infancy were developed as physical fitness trackers. But after two more models were released, a byproduct of the technology was its ability to help identify pre existing health conditions through data sets. “I set out to understand childhood obesity,” she said.

Over time, Ohlson – herself a finisher of 36 marathons, three Ironman triathlons and a Leadville Trail 100 Run – began to realize that fitness and health could best be measured through heart rate zones.

“Heart rate was the most precise and accurate way to level that field,” she said. “The documentary helped me realize what someone that age was going through, how they lived it, and breathed it.”

How Does IHT Work

IHT’s heart rate monitors today are small, simple devices that can be transferred from one student to another between class periods. Teachers in Central Texas program their semesters with these monitors in mind, often tracking how students fare in their classes by including the wearables during activities.

A daily routine will see a student take a band from a neatly ordered pack of 30 to 50 monitors, place it on a black touch-keypad and then snap it on their wrist. Within seconds, their heart rate profile will appear on a computer screen, which the teacher can then review.

Brightly-colored blue lights indicate a tracker is active, and the devices – smaller than the size of a typical fitness watch – will display a student’s heart-rate zone on the computer’s software. The lights will change to indicate fitness levels: Blue for low intensity, yellow for moderate and red for high intensity. If a student spends all class – or all week – in the blue?

“This tells me what they were doing, or what they weren’t doing,” said Nohemi Rojas, the Regional Course Leader for physical education teachers in the Austin Region for IDEA Public Schools.

Rojas is an important figure in IHT’s story, having been part of the company’s four-school pilot program in 2016 while she was at IDEA McAllen. Over the course of the last eight years, Rojas has implemented different versions of the monitors in her classes and instructed teachers on how to properly evaluate the data.

When you’re talking about 80 to 100 kids coming into class, you want a simple approach. Then it’s all about helping kids stay grounded for that 45 minutes to an hour of activity.

“When it first began, it was a way to track movement,” Rojas said. “But today, it’s a part of our daily work. The teacher’s do assessments and they’re able to track student data and progress.”

Working directly with the devices, Rojas led the implementation of a Fitness Ambassador Program, which was created in part to give ownership to students wearing the monitors. Any student who racks up 900 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) over a semester in PE class will be rewarded by being named a ‘Fitness Ambassador.’

“There was a goal the students were able to achieve,” Rojas said. “The students began to become more active as a result.”

The American Heart Association outlines five commonly-held heart rate zones measuring aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, with the highest zone leading to a person’s VO2 Max – a measurement which identifies the maximum amount of oxygen a person can consume during exercise. But Ohlson has simplified that methodology. A low intensity heart rate with IHT would be no greater than 65, a moderate zone at 130 and a max zone higher than 185.

“I think the thing we really prided ourselves on was the simplicity,” Ohlson said. “When you’re talking about 80 to 100 kids coming into class, you want a simple approach. Then it’s all about helping kids stay grounded for that 45 minutes to an hour of activity.”

A more detailed account of heart rate progress can be seen by teachers, while an email with a long-tail chart of growth can be sent to parents and their children directly. The students are given a simplified map of their success in total minutes. The overall goal, Ohlson said, is to help build long-term habits in children so that precursors for life-changing diagnoses never develop.

“It helps motivate me and keep my minutes up and allows me to stay healthy,” said Stacy Diaz, 14, who’s working toward becoming a Fitness Ambassador. “The fitness monitor helps me keep my goals up.”

Statistics from Austin IDEA Public School campuses during the most recent September to December period in 2024 revealed a total of 2.9 million minutes used and over 20 million calories burned across physical education classes. Those numbers average out to 100,000 minutes of MVPA and 125,000 calories burned every seven days.

Ohlson’s learnings have ultimately shown her that a healthy outcome can be directly connected to understanding how the heart pushes through activity. For children, that can be as simple as having sustained energy over the course of a day. Good energy can lead to better outcomes in school, socially, and within familial settings.

“You look at the things that kill us systemically,” Ohlson said. “It’s anxiety, it’s stress. You look at medications. How do you stay in a place of roundedness to avoid that stress and worry that comes with life as we age? We can help avoid heart disease, strokes caused by obesity and all the consequences that obesity brings.”

In September, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a national children’s health organization, released a list of Healthiest Schools in the U.S. and 118 IDEA Public Schools in Texas were on the list – five being from Austin area campuses. Other case studies have shown IHT’s heart rate data being used during emergency situations – in hospitals and within doctor’s offices.

While Interactive Health Technologies is primarily a business-to-business operation, Ohlson said the company is looking to create business-to-consumer pipelines in the near future – her hope is to provide access to Austin-area social workers, child psychologists, hospitals and parents. The costs for a package of monitors can range anywhere from $855 to $18,000, depending on the amount of product required and software used. Schools are right now the primary building blocks for IHT.

“Where we see the biggest requests are working with people who are in behavioral work,” Ohlson said. “How do you utilize something that can move a child through a physical or emotional block?”

How IHT Is Adapting Today

After recently acquiring a full stake in Interactive Health Technologies from a previous business partner, Ohlson says she’s focused on growth rather than outside investment as she settles into her seat as CEO. “Because of our growth and stability over the years, we’re cash positive,” she said.

With a team of nine employees – which includes marketing and sales support across the United States – Ohlson has been working toward iterating on the newest design of the heart rate monitors. The next model of the wrist band, the fourth in its history, will most likely have “precise, emotional biofeedback capabilities.” In February, a beta test is scheduled to run in a few schools, including Rojas’ program in Kyle. By April, Ohlson said she intends to have the newest versions out across her wide network.

The company’s biggest mission, Ohlson said, is for its curriculum and devices to be used actively. The 13-year-old company has devices in 36 countries around the world. IHT may be one of the only companies domestically which provides functional fitness tracking for students in schools.

“Our goal is to impact as many lives as possible on a global level,” Ohlson said. “We are not the movement. But we measure the movement in an effective way.”