BlueCon IoT Solutions: Smart Domestic Care with Hands-on IoT

Annette Ohlich, CEO

Annette Ohlich, CEO of the startup BlueCon IoT Solutions, offers two promises: “Health insurers can save up to 30 percent on long term care costs with the company’s Home & ProCare solution. Patients will accept it because it is simple to use and easy to understand.”

The BlueCon Home & ProCare solution consists of two components. Patients or family members have an intuitive tool for monitoring medical plans and their execution. The focus is on the self-control of medication, treatment, and recovery plans by means of digital helpers and the simple integration of mobile health devices (blood sugar, blood pressure measurement, balance, ECG, and dosing pumps for medicines). For commercial customers, such as health care service companies, Home & ProCare is a simple, digital solution for customer, employee, and application administration. Special focus is on linking, evaluating, and instrumentalizing data of both target groups, to ensure an efficient support of chronic or long term care patients. BlueCon took a close look at the industry’s traditional processes, designed the solution to work in this context, and developed their application for the transformation into the digital world. The focus is initially the European market, with a clear roadmap for Asia in 2019.

Health insurance companies are suffering from sky-rocketing health costs, making the health system an economic issue and a top topic of politicians in all European countries.

BlueCon transforms the process with and in to technology, making it future-proof

Saving money on healthcare becomes mandatory, but how? Ohlich adds, “Routes to digital transformation with technologies such as IoT, cloud or artificial intelligence are the basis for simplifying processes, making business much more efficient and thus more cost-effective.” In the EU, around five million people need long-term health care with an annual budget of about 150 billion euros. At the same time, health insurance companies in Germany alone have to write off around two billion euros on fraud in the sector of domestic health care services. “In our market analysis and initial tests, we found that savings of up to 30 percent are realistic with the use of Home & ProCare in domestic health care services,” says Ohlich.

BlueCon hosts and manages all data within Home & ProCare in accordance with the requirements of the European Data Protection Regulation (EU-GDPR). Key principles include security, mindfulness, transparency, and purposeful handling of personal data as well as rigid requirements around consent, consumer information requirements, and the right to be forgotten. A multi-level security concept protects Home & ProCare – at the level of storage, transfer, and evaluation of data. “Connected things”, i.e. mobile health devices, are only implemented after extensive certification. Decentralized hosting and use of private cloud enhances protection even further.

“For BlueCon, technologies such as IoT or artificial intelligence are not the core and the basis of the concept. They are simply tools. The lead paradigm is the real life process. BlueCon transforms the process with and in to technology, making it future-proof. Many others model new processes to match technologies. Ohlich adds, “That’s reinventing the wheel and then wondering why it squeaks. The third major difference is the focus. We focus on simplicity, talk to the users, find real optimization options, and improve, as we transform this process into the digital world.”

Using the Home & ProCare app is easy and does not require any installation; pairing of mobile health devices is done automatically. The intuitive use is based on the underlying practical processes – i.e. processes that users are familiar with. Usability and process conformity is continually refined by BlueCon in collaboration with test customers. With evolution built into its DNA, BlueCon sets its sights on AI, ML, and cognitive programming: early warning, diagnostics support, and optimization of treatment plans are the next big topics.