Innovatie

Pal - app for at-home palliative care

Opschaling

Pal is the first digital platform for at-home palliative care that supports anyone affected by a life-limiting illness. It helps patients, their family members and their professional care team by directly addressing the core challenges of everyday palliative caregiving, such as care provision, symptom management, and care team collaboration.

Hulpmiddel

(Tele)monitoring

Regio Noord-Holland

Help ons versnellen

We are looking to get in touch with healthcare professionals and healthcare providers that provide support to families affected by a life-limiting illness and want to test the solution with their patients.

Nara Moripen

https://www.palhelps.com/

Probleemstelling

Every year, more than 140,000 people in the Netherlands are diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, and they rely on palliative care for comfort and symptom relief. Pal aims to address the lack of timely, high-quality, and affordable palliative care, exacerbated by an aging population, healthcare staff shortages, and inefficient healthcare practices.

Oplossing

Pal is a scalable digital care tool that empowers family caregivers, and provides them with the comfort, support, and know-how of palliative caregiving. With Pal, family caregivers are able to become more trusted and capable members of their loved one's care team, helping bridge the gap between the level of support that is provided and what is needed.

VWS-missies

We help individuals get the right care in the right place (Missie II: Zorg op de juiste plek), by helping individuals with life-limiting illnesses get better support at home.

Individuals with palliative care needs tend to prefer to stay at home, but are often unable to do so due to complications, emergency hospitalisation, or a lack of at-home caregivers. Pal helps predict care needs and provides support to family caregivers, which makes it more likely for patients to stay at home for as long as they need.

Doelgroep

The Pal app is used directly by people with a life-limiting illness and their family caregivers ('mantelzorgers') to get relevant information, plan the care, and to log symptoms and other well-being factors.

It is recommended by healthcare professionals as an additional layer of support in the home setting, who benefit from the additional insights that the Pal app provides them about their patients' symptoms and general well-being.

In the Netherlands, at least 140,000 individuals can benefit from palliative care every year, and they are supported by over 500,000 family caregivers.

Verlaging zorgkosten

The care provided in an individual's final years of life is complex, time-consuming, and expensive, ranging up to EUR 60,000 annually depending on the illness, treatment, and care needs.

Pal contributes to a reduction in healthcare costs in multiple ways:
- Empowering family caregivers to become more capable members of the care team
- Time and efficiency savings for GPs ('huisartsen') and district nurses ('wijkverpleegkundige')
- Reduced risk of complications and emergencies, resulting in savings in the form of a reduction of emergency room visits, hospital stays, and ambulance rides
- Greater share of care provided at home, which is less expensive than an external care location like a hospital or hospice

Verdienmodel

Care organisations subscribe to Pal, allowing them to provide their patients and family caregivers with access to the app. At the moment, we are actively looking for pilot partners who can benefit from a special pilot discount.

Geïnvesteerd vermogen

€ 100 duizend-1miljoen

Concurrentie

Pal is a unique solution and the first of its kind to enable at-home palliative care in a complementary, scalable, and affordable manner. Competitive solutions are providers of virtual palliative care, which offer a full online digital palliative care team that offers virtual care. These are less scalable and fairly expensive solutions, as opposed to Pal which can benefit anyone with a life-limiting illness regardless of their location or financial situation.

Unieke kenmerken

Pal is an innovative platform and the first of its kind in the palliative care setting:
- Care library: We offer content specifically made for family caregivers in at-home palliative care settings, covering all the challenges, questions and information they require. This allows them to be quickly upskilled and become more capable caregivers.
- Symptom tracker and insights: Pal is the only solution that offers healthcare providers insights into the symptoms and health factors that patients with palliative care needs have at home. This allows them to make quicker and more proactive care decisions, even at a distance.
- Palliative care planner: Pal offers a unique care planning tool specifically designed for families in the palliative care setting. This allows them to share information and stay on top of all care-related tasks.

Intellectueel eigendom

All our content is protected under copyright law. We also have a trademarked slogan.

Organisatie

We are a small team with big ambitions. We want to help the 140,000 people in the Netherlands who depend on palliative care for comfort and quality of life, but also want to expand quickly to be able to support 56.8 million families around the world who share the same need.

We want to continue to keep the core team in the Netherlands and build out our innovative palliative care platform further. We believe Pal can grow to become a globally-recognised business with operations worldwide.

Beschrijving pilotfase

We have conducted an internal pilot consisting of 50 families affected by a life-limiting illness. In addition, we will be rolling out a pilot in partnership with Gemeente Den Haag and Technologie Voor Thuis.

The product is used by 100s of families affected by life-limiting illness every month.

Betrokken partners

We have worked with multiple volunteers from various healthcare fields to co-create the product, including palliative care thought leaders, palliative care doctors, oncologists, palliative care nurses, hospice workers, and district and home nurses.

In addition to our broad group of co-creators, we have also deeply involved our in-house medical team, consisting of Marcus Stow (nurse with 20+ years of experience in emergency medicine, home care and palliative care) and Ynke Vellinga (GP with daily experience caring for patients with at-home palliative care needs).

Aantal gebruikers pilot

11-100

Onderzoeksresultaten

Our internal pilot was primarily focused on evaluating the need and usability for family caregivers. The pilot proved that over 80% of our users found the app easy to use and that it provided them with helpful information in their daily caregiving. We currently do not have results from the pilot with Gemeente Den Haag.

Implementatiestrategie

We have a multi-pronged strategy to reach our end users:
- Healthcare organisations: We are recommended by GPs, district nurses, palliative care teams and hospices.
- Partnerships: We partner with patient- and caregiver-facing organisations, like patient organisations and caregiver organisations.
- Direct to consumer: We reach our end users directly via our growing social media presence, through search, and on relevant forums.

Reeds in gebruik

We are used by several hundred families with palliative care needs.

Behaalde prestaties of gewonnen awards

- Winner, CareTech 2023 (organized by Yes!Delft, Gemeente Den Haag, Technologie voor Thuis)
- Challenge winner, Urban Tech 2023, "Digital remote monitoring system of cancer patients", EU-funded
- 3rd Place, She Loves Tech 2022

Productontwikkeling

In addition to continuously improving existing features, we will be rolling out the following features in collaboration with healthcare partners:
- Well-being questionnaires: We will launch regularly occurring questionnaires that helps monitor patients' well-being over time.
- Improved reporting and insights: There will be possibilities to securely view and share user-friendly reports that present patient- and family-reported data. Healthcare personnel will be able to access a secure dashboard with comprehensive insights and trends.
- Predictive alerts: Our vast amounts of data and insights concerning symptoms, well-being factors, medications, and other observations will be used to predict potential complications and other adverse outcomes that put patients' comfort at risk.

Internationale ambitie

Pal was built with geographical expansion in mind, due to its scalable nature. At the moment, our main focus is on the Netherlands and the UK, but we also have broad networks and significant interest in Germany, Canada, the US, and Australia, making these attractive target markets for us in the future.

Omzet

€ 0-10k