Elena Heller and Michele Gianella-Borradori know what the day-to-day work of nurses looks like. Photo: Weindel
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By Sabine Hebbelmann
Neckargemünd / Mannheim. Elena Heller was working as a product manager in the field of renewable energies when there was a need for care in her family. As is well known, the working conditions in nursing are not the best – but she was surprised to see how much nursing staff are on their own in their everyday work and how complex the communication with those involved is. Here she saw potential and founded the start-up one and a half years ago together with her colleague at the time, Michele Gianella-Borradori, in the creative industry center C-Hub in Mannheim Nooa GmbH.
“We sat in on the nursing services for six months, got up at 5 o’clock and were out and about with the nursing staff,” reports the 32-year-old. Gianella-Borradori comes from a completely different world. With a double degree in banking / finance and strategic management, he first worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs in London and Sydney.
Education, energy and health, those are the three big future topics, he is sure, and so he was drawn to Sonnen GmbH, where he met Elena Heller. Lots of people work in the energy industry and there are enough young professionals, he notes. “With nursing, we are now dedicating ourselves to a globally important topic that not so many care about.”
A nursing worker bandages an old man’s legs. Photo: dpaHeller, who comes from Neckargemünd, speaks of a “first-hand experience”. The 30-year-old experienced how passionate and passionate many nurses are and how important their work is. But also how hard they work as lone fighters and how communication with colleagues and relatives is sometimes laborious and in very different ways: by phone, Post-it, fax or simply by keeping things in mind. In any case, the interest in improvement was great, and with the feedback from the first customers, the young founders have developed a platform that is supposed to make organization and communication easier for care services.
Nursing services usually form local networks with doctors, pharmacies, therapists, medical supply stores and other stakeholders. Heller observes that digital solutions are often used for organization and communication that are neither user-friendly nor up to date. “Nursing services receive updates on CD,” she wonders.
“Organize your day-to-day care and communicate quickly and securely with your team and your network,” it says on the site. Heller and Gianella-Borradori provide an insight into the tool via video switch, the more detailed description of which is not yet online for competitive reasons.
Interested parties can register by e-mail, get an appointment for a non-binding introduction and can set up an account. “The users are very surprised when they can invite their network to their network after just 15 minutes. It’s an extraordinary experience,” said Heller. The “Noah Plattform“also mobile via smartphone.
On the platform there are digital “pin boards” that every organization can use for itself and its network and design individually. With the “slip of paper” tasks can be noted down or assigned to others. And with the help of the “digital handover”, nursing staff can save themselves a lot of the way, because up to now they have mostly written their comments in a handover book. The next shift then has to go to the office to read.
Internal communication works in a similar way to a messenger service. “That sounds familiar to us,” is the feedback from the nursing staff. The advantage: You can log out after work and you don’t have to be available all the time. After all, burnout is a common phenomenon in care.
“The whole responsibility rests on their shoulders,” says Heller and reports that there have been twelve Corona ordinances since the beginning of the pandemic that have affected care and had to be implemented at short notice. In contrast to popular messenger services, users are not forced to reveal their data. “Data protection is extremely important to us”, emphasizes Gianella-Borradori and describes it as the basis of digitization and “the foundation on which we build”.
He reports that doctors who want to set up their practice communication on the platform are among the first customers. The costs for the care services, which often work on the edge of profitability, are manageable – there is also a special offer during the Corona crisis. Users can also unsubscribe at any time with a one-month notice period. “We don’t want to bind anyone,” assures Heller.
The start-up currently has eight employees, and more are being sought. The plan is to set up the platform in several languages with the aim of making it usable worldwide.
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