“For the eldest, 2017 will be about aging well… at home!” Speech of F. Houhou, co-founder and Managing Director of RoboCARE Lab

For RoboCARE Lab, 2016 was about raising funds through the first French co-funding platform Hoolders, specialized in silver economy, healthcare and robotics. Those 110.000 euros will allow us, as a young startup, to anticipate this new 2017 year and to keep developing qualitative partnerships with the main actors of the silver economy market.

Aging well at home is the crux of the matter!

In France, how to finance the dependency of our senior people and pay for nursing homes are real questions. In a context of demographic crisis, the French law on the adaptation of society to ageing that came into force a year ago, may help move forward.

What’s for sure is that straightforward solutions already exist to accompany the eldest. Our telepresence solution PRESENCE+Home allows families to virtually visit a senior relative who happens to live isolated, thus creating or recreating some affective bonds. Studies demonstrate positive results: such visits through a telepresence robot help treat the depression of the eldest by stimulating them on a cognitive point of view.

“We started to develop partnerships with home support specialists”

Driven by those encouraging conclusions, we started to develop partnerships with home support specialists and some major insurance companies in France. Figures are clear to us: with doubling numbers of people aged more than 75 and 3 French out of 4 willing to stay at home in case of diminishing autonomy, aging well at home is the crux of the matter here!

Last year’s exhibitions in France – Silver Eco Expo and Robonumérique, among others – were the starting point of multiple opportunities. The President of the Region Hauts-de-France (North of the country) announced they will help finance technological experimentations on solutions like ours. We are pretty sure that PRESENCE+Home will soon be part of the range of services offered by the French home support companies. The company TELEGRAFIK for instance, as a specialist in connected intergenerational services, is already testing our robots: coupled with their movement sensors in the house of senior people, they should be a big step in helping isolated people. Our goal? To allow quick and efficient interventions in the event of an accident.

2017 will be about aging well at home!

2016 also came to an end with a technical partnership with the French mail system La Poste, which includes the delivery and the setup of our robots in the house of isolated old people. I think you get it: everything is about recreating proximity, with families as well as with assistance professionals. 2017 will be about aging well at home! It will be a relief for everyone – the eldest and their caregivers.

Thus accompanied, our isolated relatives are reassured and make peaceful plans to stay a bit more in their homes. As for the caregivers – who often happen to be women and employees – they get some help from those virtual visits that implicate other family members or professionals. That is a huge support! 2017 will also be about working with HR departments in companies willing to accompany better their caregiver employees. 73% of them say they are suffering: anxiousness, stress, even burnout… Let’s not overlook any details of their situations.

The RoboCARE Lab team wishes you a happy new year. Be with the ones you love. Caring and solidarity among generations will count, for than ever, in 2017!

Faissal Houhou, co-founder and Managing Director of RoboCARE Lab