A Dutch healthcare organization is looking for new technologies to bring their current digital remote care application to a next level.

Summary

A Dutch healthcare organization provides care and guidance to people with intellectual disabilities. They run an on-line digital product which provides 24/7 remote care by professional counsellors. The organization is looking for technical and strategic partners to take the current product to the next level, both on the side of the user and on the side of the operator. A commercial agreement with technical assistance, a license agreement or a technical cooperation agreement is aimed for.

Description

A Dutch healthcare organization supports people with intellectual disabilities throughout the Netherlands with the sincere motivation to help everyone to get the best out of themselves. The organization is the second largest healthcare provider in their sector and has more than 9,200 customers, 7,600 employees and more than 500 locations.
The support concerns people 1) who live-in 2) receive intensive care or 3) outpatient support; people who come to stay or who want to spend their day meaningfully and discover more and more talents.
The organization is constantly looking for innovation and opportunities to improve their support and to improve the quality of the lives of all these people.

The organization runs a sub brand, an activity providing 24/7 remote care by professional counsellors to people with an intellectual disability. The remote services are offered since 2015 and is of value to over 3,000 customers, from the organization as well as other healthcare providers.
Clients can either establish contact via an app on the smart phone / tablet or by calling, whatever suits their needs. The app, which is available in iOS and Android, has a very simple user interface. By simply clicking on the button a connection is made.

Providing virtual personal care is becoming increasingly important due to three developments:
• There will be a shortage of employees. Currently, 1 out of 7 Dutch people work in health care. If we do not change anything, this will have to change to 1 out of 4 people within 10 years to provide an answer to the rising demand in healthcare. This is simply impossible.
• There is a shortage of real estate to provide housing for health clients. Expansion is unaffordable due to high prices of land and housing in the Netherlands.
• The rising demand in Health Care, forces the Dutch government to cut back on budgets for ‘basic’ healthcare needs. This will demand from healthcare organisations that they support more clients for the same amount of money.

In order to respond adequately to these developments, it is necessary to take remote care to a next and higher level, such as: speech and / or facial recognition with an early psychological and emotional analysis.
Here the following questions can be addressed: What is the state of the art in this particular field? Which out of the box innovations and new possibilities can be envisioned or are already available? And how can they be implemented in the current setting?
Innovation and ideas are sought both on the side of the user (client) and on the side of the operator (remote counsellor).

The organisation is looking for technical and strategic partners experienced in this ICT field and with a specific focus on: creative thinking from a customer’s perspective, knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI), emotion detection/recognition technology, tech & design, software development, big data analytics, software integration skills and business process modelling.
The company aims for a commercial agreement with technical assistance, a license agreement or a technical cooperation agreement. When serving the purpose also other agreements can be envisioned.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This technology request is part of an innovation challenge and is published on an open innovation platform from the 3rd of May and will close on the 7th of June. If an organization does express interest in collaboration with this company before closing date, it will be guided through this open innovation platform and be introduced to the company’s experts. Mind that posts on this platform are not confidential.
Next step is that the company will select the SMEs with whom they would like to cooperate in the development of the solution. Once the challenge is closed, EOIs for this technology request will be handled in the traditional way.

Expertise sought

The requested solution comprises an creative and out of the box approach and is a mix of a variety of expertise’s from software design, data analytics to emotion detection or recognition technology and artificial intelligence.

The current digital remote care application (to be reinvented):
• Offers 24-hour support to anyone who sometimes needs a helpline. Professional supervisors are available day and night to be of help.
• Clients are connected to the system with a simple push on the button. Then a professional supervisor appears to help.
• The system is a remote support via video calling. Contact can be 24 hours made by a variety of devices such as: computer, laptop, tablet, telephone. Furthermore, video calls can be made spontaneously or by appointment.

Stage of Development

Available for demonstration

Stage of Development Comment

The company would expect the stage of the technology to be at or beyond proof of feasibility and preferably already be proven in commercial applications.

Requested Partner

The organization is looking for technical partners, SMEs, inventors and academia for the further (co-)development of their current remote care product using innovative technologies and solutions. It is conceivable that the collaboration will continue in de direction of the expansion of the foreseen product to other markets and / or countries and stretching the business model of the current application.

The envisioned role of the partner:
• Creative thinking from a customer’s perspective
• Knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI)
• Emotion detection/recognition technology
• Tech & design
• Software development
• Business process modelling
• Big data analytics
• Software integration skills
•
The request comprises a further offer regarding:
• An assignment to realize a prototype or pilot
• Support and test environment
• Probability of a follow-up order, scaling up or lasting cooperation
• Interesting showcase in the Dutch health care market