More than 2.5 million people in Germany are family caregivers. Family caregivers are under psychological, social, financial and physical strain and experience little support. We are developing a digital companion for this purpose. It is intended to bring together family caregivers in a community-based approach and enable an active exchange between family caregivers as well as with caregivers and doctors in order to improve care at home in a needs-oriented manner. The main aim is to relieve family caregivers of the "feeling of being alone" and at the same time to professionalize home care. In addition, the option of providing comprehensive information on specific disorders/illnesses, including further risks, is to be integrated. Other functions that our app will offer include, for example, a tool to enable task management within the family, the ability to automatically store vital signs and receive evaluations (e.g., in combination with other smart solutions), and the option to place care-related orders (e.g., trigger automated orders when medication levels reach a critical level).

Need and target group

Caring for family members takes up a lot of time and ties up enormous resources - financially, psychologically, socially. These people often feel left alone in this process: On the one hand, there is a lack of exchange to talk about the stressful factors psycho-hygienically, on the other hand, there is a lack of know-how on these specialist topics. A platform solution for personal exchange within the peer group as well as with nurses and doctors from one source is missing here. With our solution, we provide family caregivers with a central point of contact where information and exchange opportunities are bundled and create a community that helps each other. This relieves family caregivers of the "feeling of being alone" and at the same time professionalizes home care. In addition, the digital companion facilitates administrative tasks, such as task management within the family, tracking vital parameters and placing care-related orders.

After conducting qualitative interviews with family caregivers and having them fill out quantitative questionnaires, we went into the analysis & formulation of the specifications. We found that family caregivers often have "half-knowledge" on the knowledge level and that the information provided is "confusing", which leads to the entire process being "time-consuming" and "energy-consuming", and on an emotional level leads to "stress" and "strain". This reveals the following:

(1) An emotional exchange with other family caregivers supports.

(2) An exchange of knowledge with experts, caregiving relatives or other stakeholders about disturbance patterns, support services, billing and planning leads to relief and a more sustainable approach to care.

(3) A communication tool between stakeholders on an emotional & professional level as well as an overview of methods, tools and processes within an app helps.

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Value proposition

With the help of our solution, we want to implement a community-based app for family caregivers to address this difficult and emotionally charged issue. The value proposition and associated product solutions / services break down as follows:

(a) Building knowledge on disorders for family caregivers (basics).

(b) Emotional & professional exchange within the community of caring relatives

(c) Communication channel to experts on care (caregivers, doctors, insurance, ...)

(d) Overview of help offers and direct in-app ordering for certain products.

With the help of these 4 pillars (knowledge, exchange, expertise, offers of help), a large part of the topics that caregiving relatives need is covered.

Subsequently, it is still being discussed whether an "everyday manager" for the planning and coordination of appointments, medications, orders, etc. will be integrated into the application.

Through the knowledge provided and the community-based approach between family caregivers and other experts, as many family caregivers as possible should be able to use the application in the long term. This offer is and remains free of charge.

The business model is twofold:

(1) On the one hand, there will be a premium function for specific content (e.g., an everyday manager for planning and coordinating everyday care-related tasks).

(2) On the other hand, the help offers/solutions/tools listed in the app will pay a fee (of the revenue share) for each sale done through the app.

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