Motion Tracking App to Prevent the Elderly from Falls
In our series ‘Innovations Made in Berlin’, we present startups making a difference in their fields. Today, Lindera.
Claire Gimenez is French by birth, but seems to have lost her heart to Berlin. Before joining Lindera as Head of Sales, she worked as Export Manager in the food industry. To advance projects in healthcare, she herself went to care facilities on her own initiative in order to understand the sector’s problems. This was the reason why she got excited about Lindera's mission: to bring great AI innovations to a couple of the most promising healthcare markets with the highest quality standards, Germany and France.
We asked Claire to explain Lindera.
This series is called “Innovations made in Berlin”. What is your innovation? When did it originate, and where? Can you describe the place, and who was involved?
We are a deep-tech company called Lindera. Since founding in 2017, we’ve been specializing in 3D motion analysis for digital health, elderly care, and fitness applications. We are passionate about serving our aging society in order to contribute to a shift from a reactive healthcare system to a prevention-oriented one. Lindera was initially founded by Diana Heinrichs in Berlin, a former Communications and Business Development Manager at Microsoft Germany.
What do you sell and why should someone buy it?
We’ve developed AI-based medical apps that estimate 3D human poses from short smartphone videos, which is why you can describe our technology as the very first highly precise gait lab for your pocket. Our LTech is already used in more than 400 care facilities, as well as in physiotherapy and in a yoga app called SkillYoga. The areas of application are diverse. In the context of SkillYoga, it acts as a digital coach whose USP is to provide real-time feedback on your performance.
But for now, our technology is mainly used in the field of nursing and elderly care. Our motion tracking app (we affectionately call it “SturzApp” which means “app for falls”) has been proven to analyze and reduce the risk of falls for senior citizens. For older people, falls often lead to serious injuries that result in longer hospital stays and a progression of the need for care. With the help of our AI-driven mobility analysis, we include a total of 14 different influencing factors in our fall risk assessment, which is based on the expert standard for fall prevention. On top of that, our analysis is the most comprehensive one compared to conventional methods, provides therapy recommendations as well as automatic transfer to nursing documentation, including assistance with wording.
People should get engaged with our technology because we want to make it easy for older people, family caregivers and nursing staff, to prevent falls and maintain an active and high quality of life in every stage of life, but especially in old age. Beyond that we want to unburden the care environment and enable new ways of working and digital participation. Of course, this also pays off in terms of attracting young talents to join one of the most meaningful jobs in the world.
How did you find funding for Lindera?
With our groundbreaking technology, we were able to attract investors quickly. Rheingau Founders have been our supporters since our very early stage and have already accompanied us through many milestones. At the end of last year, we welcomed the family office zwei.7 into our circle of investors, who focus on smart healthcare applications.
What advice that you got at an early stage helped you the most while starting and growing your business in Berlin?
Be brave and work hard and be grateful when luck comes your way.
“We have always sought and maintained contact with the practictioners”
How did you manage to establish contacts to potential clients?
Many of them managed to reach us before we did! Apart from that, mostly through conferences and fairs as well as internal recommendations. At Lindera, we are an interdisciplinary team and many of us have previously worked in nursing and clinical practice roles. We have always sought and maintained contact with the practictioners. It is how we believe medical apps should ideally be developed – alongside the potential clients.
What do you want to achieve in the next six months?
We aim to publish the results of our outpatient studies and expect similarly promising results as with inpatient care. Further, we want to reach the 500 user mark for our first-mover medical app, the SturzApp, in care facilities. We are on the verge of doing so.
Moreover, we want to draw attention to the political processes and advocate for an easy launch of digital care applications [which are still strongly regulated in Germany]. We strongly campaign for digital care applications because they are an essential element to relieve the burden on caregivers and family caregivers and independently empower them to become more professional and work on equal footing with other medical staff. I got started in Germany on the premise that these great AI innovations will also go to France. I have traveled to care institutions on my own initiative to promote projects. And I am a strong supporter of partnerships, including the cooperation with Korian [a leading private provider of care and nursing services for seniors].
How do you find the right people to work with?
We need people who are able to not only sell our product but who are also willing to push our message through, and who understand the difficulties of caregivers in order to offer them an alternative.
What is right now the biggest challenge for Lindera?
Endure the slow process of digital care applications regulation... The health and care sector is understaffed and overburdened. Therefore it is important for us to support our caregivers now with concrete, effective, and evidence-based solutions.
What is your reason why Berlin is the place to be?
Berlin offers the optimal interface between many healthcare institutions, health insurers, and the Charité University Medical Center in the immediate vicinity, in addition to political and scientific institutions. Short distances help us to overcome misconceptions and hurdles to digitalization in the health sector. For us as a deep-tech and digital healthcare company with a focus on the healthcare sector, being close to the political players is just as important as being close to medicine and science.
What have you personally learned so far on this journey?
If we don’t stand for change now, we will miss great opportunities to live longer and better ourselves. Also, you cannot ignore a shortage of skilled workers in our society. And higher wages are not enough. New approaches to work are needed. In France and also in Germany, people's well-being is a top priority. To meet this, we must not deny our older generations digital participation.
Thank you, Claire.
In the next few months we will be showcasing more Innovations Made in Berlin.
Interview: Olaf Bryan Wielk, ideenmanufaktur
Header image: © Lindera
