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Three companies to continue prototype work in demand accelerator

Another step has been taken towards creating a digital service that increases care’s understanding of cognitive impairment. In collaboration with DigitalWell Arena’s demand accelerator, Karlstad Municipality has now procured three companies to create prototypes for a potential solution.

Initially, seven companies were procured to participate in the innovation process – which in itself is unique for a public procurement. The companies then met with representatives from Karlstad Municipality’s Health and Social Care Unit and the demand accelerator team to present their concept proposals in more detail. The goal is to develop a digital service that can increase care staff’s understanding of cognitive impairment – an umbrella term for symptom profiles involving a decline in cognitive ability, including dementia.

Three companies continue prototype work

The four-week concept phase has resulted in three companies being selected to continue the work: Virotea, Minnity, and Koncepting. The criteria decisive for the selection included the companies’ maturity and capacity in combination with the concept proposal’s user-friendliness and potential.

Most important, however, was the “goosebump factor” – the sense of how well the solution was judged to increase staff’s understanding of the target group.

– We have worked with experiences for a long time, but want to activate our emotional antennae even more when it comes to experiencing what it is like to live with cognitive impairment. The value for us is that we support our staff in their competence development so they can deliver better health and social care, says Ann-Sophie Gustafsson, Development Manager at Karlstad Municipality.

Based on a given scenario

The prototype phase that has now begun runs for eight weeks, with each of the three companies receiving SEK 50,000. The prototypes are to be based on a scenario describing what a typical day can look like for a person with cognitive impairment. A contract will then be signed with the company that has created the solution best judged to make the target group’s needs visible.

Ann-Sophie Gustafsson, Development Manager at Karlstad Municipality, believes the process has generated new insights, where even the companies that did not proceed contributed important input – for example, that the solution needs to be flexible and expandable with different scenarios.

A requirement for all procurements carried out through DigitalWell Arena’s demand accelerator is that a potential solution must be economically sustainable. This means that the services and products developed are scalable and can spread to more customers. Based on the high quality of all seven concept proposals in Karlstad’s procurement, Ann-Sophie Gustafsson is convinced that more than one solution can emerge from the process:

– It feels incredibly positive, and has also made it difficult to choose. The beauty of this work and the process that DigitalWell Arena has created is that an incubator is built in parallel, where the companies have the opportunity to receive support to develop. So even if you don’t get a contract with us in Karlstad Municipality, there can still be a path to market.

Shifting focus to needs

In general, Ann-Sophie Gustafsson believes the fundamental idea behind the demand accelerator – with public procurement as a driving force for innovation – can become important for managing welfare in the future.

– Within the Health and Social Care Unit in Karlstad, we have for quite some time had thoughts about working with innovation procurement, but that is not the same as procuring innovation. That is what we are doing here. Showing companies vision films as inspiration is very different from a traditional procurement, which often contains a gigantic list of requirements. I believe this is the path we need to take – with more needs-driven procurement rather than a focus on a solution, where we request something we cannot find on the market.