Dutch eHealth Care Innovations in Scandinavia

26 May 2016

The Dutch company FocusCura has entered into a series of partnerships in order to introduce their eHealth products cVitals and cContact in Denmark and Sweden. It seems that eHealth has become a promising export product for the Netherlands.

FocusCura is starting in Sweden with cVitals(for the chronically ill) and cContact, which is already used on a large scale in home care in the Netherlands. To this end FocusCura has entered into a reseller partnership with Atea, a major Scandinavian supplier for health care organizations. In Denmark the Dutch innovations will first be introduced in the home care sector for vulnerable people in the city of Aalborg. A reseller partnership with a Danish supplier will be concluded in the near future.

New Standard

The expansion into Scandinavia follows a study carried out by the Danish government investigating 1400 patients. On the basis of this study the Danish government decided that cVitals is the new standard for providing this kind of care to patients with COPD, and in the coming years it will be implemented in all regions. The same developments can be seen in Sweden, where the great distances create an extra reason to implement these solutions.

cVitals

The cVitals system allows patients to measure their vital signs in the comfort of their own home using a personalized cVitals-program and then securely send their results to a health care provider or health care organization. The program algorithm compares the measurements and the baseline values that have been set for that patient to see whether there is an increased health risk, in which case the system sends an alert. On receiving the alert, the health care provider can contact the patient to get more information about the situation. In this way patients can be monitored and assisted from a distance. FocusCura has programs for cardiac failure, heart problems, COPD, hypertension and ALS.

cContact

The cContact-app provides video communication and uses a smart address book so clients and health care providers can quickly contact one another. The app is extremely simple to use, which is very important, as the average age of users is well over 70 years. Video contact has added value for both the patient and the health care provider. This essentially makes health care independent of time and place, which means that the elderly and the chronically ill can live independently in their own homes for longer.

Opportunities for Exports

Denmark and Sweden are consistently found near the top of international rankings for quality of health care. "There are also a lot of opportunities in these countries in the fields of health care innovation and the application of eHealth," says Ronald Scheffer, who manages international partnerships within FocusCura. "But the Scandinavian countries specifically look for innovations internationally as well as within their own countries. They look for successful concepts that improve health care and can reduce its costs. This provides enormous opportunities for Dutch companies to export health care innovations, and we are proud to be a leader in this regard."