Factory's IoT Circle Offers Experience

Yesterday the Factory IoT Circle met together at Factory Berlin G?rlitzer Park where we heard from Circle member, Pedro Silva, the CTO of AssistMe. In this focused gathering, we had the chance to learn from his experience. It's worth taking a closer look because his team creatively solves real-world challenges in a dedicated fashion that shakes up old ways of doing thing and attracts investment.

AssistMe develops an IoT care platform that addresses a growing trend of incontinence and an ageing population. Their solution involves smart diapers, including PCBs and sensor design. They are committed to disrupting the notion of simply 'following routines' for at least two reasons: a) high stress and turnover in care staff and b) nursing care facilities alone in Germany consume 1 billion diapers per year. 

Pedro provided worthy recommendations to the attendees:

1. Do field testing asap; figure out the 'unknown unknowns'. You'll learn a ton but don't use it as an excuse for poor production.
2. Reputation is key in healthcare, so focus on your most important feature.
3. Keep motivated: find the right tools to best connect to your user and keep them motivated. For example, his team does a lot of UX training with content and video to engage the users, or care givers. 

My fellow IoT Circle captain, Daniel Young (shown below), engaged our audience (which included product designers, researchers, engineers, hardware specialists, entrepreneurs among others) in a discussion around their own experiences, the current 'climate' in Germany regarding medical data, data security, and medical device categorization.

Pedro (shown below) discussed future plans and closed by explaining AssistMe's business model which involves the fact that care facilities are incentivized to become more efficient and less-wasteful, offering more precision care. It's a double win: improving life- and care-quality while differentiating themselves as care providers.

The Berlin-based startup is a HealthTech venture from NBT. AssistMe just closed a 2 Million euro funding round and is looking to hire, so check out their website for new opportunities.

As a Factory Berlin IoT Circle captain myself, feel free reach out with ideas to offer the group, or add a comment below. You can also follow my writing about Berlin's tech and entrepreneurship scene on Medium. Hope to see you at a future gathering to exchange ideas, best practices and resources in developing and designing innovative products and services!