From care to taking care for

From care to taking care for

Colin de Melker is in his mid-thirties and has a spinal cord injury. Due to his condition, he needs care three times a day. He hires his care himself and therefore has to arrange a lot of documentation. In addition to patient care, his care team also has many administrative tasks and a careful handover. Until recently, this was still done the old-fashioned way: on paper. Registering all data took time and was also prone to errors. This was at the expense of moments of concern. Can't this be much smarter, Colin thought. He came up with the idea for the Home Care app, an app to connect care providers and the care recipients, to increase the reliability of information and to optimize the internal communication of the care team.

Colin has a background in project management. He knows well what he wants and also what his care team needs. Although he has a great interest in digital care, programming and robotization, he needs a partner in crime to actually bring his idea to life. Via FFWD he comes into contact with Maarten Simons. Maarten is a UX / UI designer, studying Communication & Multimedia Design and looking for an internship project to work on. 

In addition, Maarten has been fighting cancer for fifteen years. 

He knows healthcare well and has a broad insight into (underlying) problems that patients encounter in daily life.  The two immediately click. 

Together they develop the concept into a software product. They conduct extensive research and frequently test the functionalities and also receive support from two developers of FFWD. The app is being optimized further and further. Collin and Maarten will not believe their eyes when the Thuiszorg app actually sees the light of day. Colin and his healthcare team are now using the app with great enthusiasm. And it works great.

What makes the app so good? The app makes it easy to save time and improve quality of care. The Home Care app makes manual recording unnecessary, limits documentation errors to a minimum and saves time and patient attention for both the care recipient and the care provider at the bottom of the line. For example, Colin has access to an overview where he can follow his care and care moments in detail. This gives him a certain degree of peace of mind and control, because it allows him to see whether all essential data is correct. The nurses can use the app to enter the type of medication and the amount taken during each care moment the care moments are administered. They also have the option to add notes and record vital signs. After all important aspects have been entered, they are saved. The history of a patient remains clear and administration afterwards is unnecessary. This makes transfer much smoother. The next "shift" simply reads at a time of your choice simply to prepare.

We are now two years later. The app is now fully used to everyone's satisfaction. 

Technical developments have not stood still. And fortunately neither Maarten and Colin. Maarten is back at FFWD for his graduation internship. After eight years he hopes to complete his studies, an amazing milestone. Maarten's zest for life is limitless. With cancer, you don't know what tomorrow will look like, so he wants to get the most out of life.

Due to the growing need for digital home care, he shares the ambition with Colin to make the Home Care app accessible to a wider audience and further develop it. They have this opportunity at FFWD. Maarten can graduate at his own pace. The line with Colin and the development team is short. Together they work with the FFWD development team in Serbia to optimize the app. Home care finally has an app that can play a meaningful role for more patients and (home) care organizations.

Would you like to take home care further?

Colin, Maarten and FFWD are open to anyone who wants to use the app themselves or who can make a good contribution or investment to take home care even further. Do you have ideas and would you like to talk about them? Join the board.