(Slovenia)  Jan Dobrilovič: Beeping is an on-demand assistance service to help people and their family members stay independent while living securely and happily at home

A QUICK INTRODUCTION ABOUT WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES/YOUR VALUES/MISSION.

 
Beeping is an on-demand assistance service to help people and their family members stay independent while living securely and happily at home. We deliver subscription elderly care.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF?

While the idea and product are a reflection of the quality of the founders, you can’t make a smart investment without looking into the founders first. We know each other (with cofounder David) for past 14 years. My background was more corporate, working for the biggest energy and oil company in region while David has always been a entrepreneur. At the beginning we didn’t not contribute only with own funds to launch the company but aslso working crazy hours as we push to get the Beeping vision off the ground. Our main value is – get shit done and execute. With great coworkers we are on path to become a successful company and even better place to work for.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME A YEAR OR TWO, WHAT PIECE OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOURSELF?

 
Make faster interaction, test even more and execute. Less development, don’t look for perfection.

WHAT PROBLEM DOES YOUR BUSINESS SOLVE?

There has been an enormous demographic shift in all Europe. People are living longer. And as a result there are more people who are caring for their parents and family members. A rapidly ageing population means the elderly care sector will be unsustainable by 2028 without increased investment, improved transparency and new technology. Beeping is aware that technology is key in bringing more and more healthcare services out of hospitals but even more important be prompt in identification of next action, scenarios when client health or mental condition changes, ensuring they can receive better, faster care in their home. Early detection of cognitive and medical health issues, peace of mind for family members and reduced healthcare costs.

WHAT IS THE INSPIRATION BEHIND YOUR BUSINESS?

 
Older adults are living longer and redefining aging, balancing their desire for autonomy with increased dependence on others. Each day more than 10.000 new baby boomers turn 65 years (as per Eurostat) and more than 60.000 new Senior Care jobs are needed in EU per year (OECD reports). As a consequence significant supply shortage is present on market and will be even more in next years. With limited amount of capacities in retirement, nursing homes (only 2% EU citizens can stay at those), it is obvious that majority of population will be remaining in their homes and communities as they age, rather than relocating or moving into an institutional setting. Depression and loneliness without proper monitoring will become even bigger problem.

WHAT IS YOUR MAGIC SAUCE?

Majority of elderly care services are done by fragmented black market vendors, so individual providers and small SME companies. Such vendors, due to technical also financial limitations, aren’t able to provide instant information as well as the collection of data and the analytics of it due lack of knowledge. Short-term services help in performing the daily basic activities, while long-term services focus on the residential facilities. In nowadays monitoring takes place only in residential facilities but those who spend their aging at home are largely left to take care for themselves without vital feedback and the possibility of lifesaving reaction.

WHAT IS THE PLAN FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE?

Beeping will introduce a health care platform (Family portal) which will gather real world data, interpret it with machine learning algorithms and provide users information and actionable guidelines that lead to improving the health of the cared elders in their homes.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE YOU’VE FACED SO FAR?

Transition from existing on demand household platform (present in 3 EU countries) to become Elderly Care provider.

HOW DO PEOPLE GET INVOLVED/BUY INTO YOUR VISION?

Remote patient monitoring has long been heralded as a way to help doctors treat patients without seeing them regularly. Especially using medical devices, physicians could track patient health outside of the clinical setting and intervene early if necessary. But early remote patient monitoring devices faced a few key challenges. Comprehensive data tools oversaturated doctors’ offices with bits of data collected over the days and weeks of every minute of every patient. This forced clinicians to sift through a mountain of numbers. This process is extremely time consuming, difficult to track for each patient.
Setting up the technology also proved challenging. Some patients, especially older individuals, ran into troubleshooting issues. This rendered the devices useless and turned workers at doctors’ offices into IT help, creating inefficiencies at clinics. In Beeping we focus on the group of people older than 65 years. Our main goal is to provide informative and actionable feedback to family members by harvesting real world data provided by our caregivers with the help of machine learning suggestions to improve the health of the seniors. Giving the seniors extended quality of their lives and their families a peace of mind.