​How startups help expand ENGIE’s e-health service offerings

We asked Patrick Lefebvre, Deputy Regional Delegate for Western France, to outline the stages of the call for projects for us.

In what context was this call for projects launched?

While our goal from the start was to contribute to the SAMOA/Creative District cluster and to participate in the debate about how to build the new Nantes hospital, we were also quickly supported by Ineo Digital, who wanted to improve their "Patient Health Terminal" platform. They have already installed it in ten hospitals, where 3,000 terminals are available to patients.

A daylong workshop was held in early November on the subject of e-health. It was hosted by the Creative Cluster and involved a number of different stakeholders from the business, medical and hospital sectors. The 70 participants worked on various e-health issues and helped improve the targets of the call for projects.

Were you surprised by the number and quality of applications?

The call for projects was advertised on the Group’s open innovation platform, which certainly gave it more visibility than it would have had by being passed around locally. In fact, only 5 of the 19 projects were from local project leaders.

The applications were all quite different, and the abundance of ideas gave us real food for thought on how to move forward.

We had planned to select up to five winning projects, though only one of them would be able to win the €5,000 prize. In the end, the selection committee chose four projects which were announced on March 30th.

Easy Care won the Ineo Digital prize
Directo Santé won the ENGIE BPA prize
Kiplin won the ENGIE Nantes University Hospital prize
Stimul won the ENGIE SAMOA prize

Can you tell us more about these innovative projects?

Stimul is an online platform that lets you set up health and wellness programs help users adopt healthy habits more easily. It involves an online platform connected to a real human coach and online educational videos. It's a Parisian start-up that wants to set up a facility in Nantes.

Directo Santé is a Nantes-based project. It’s a mobile application that helps patients get answers to their questions from the medical team that treated them in the hospital after they’ve returned home.

Kiplin is also a Nantes-based project. It organizes competitions and connected events based on physical activities while tracking patients and interacting with them in real time.

Last but not least, Easy Care was the winning project chosen by Ineo Digital. It is an application that allows the hospital to get patients’ free and informed consent prior to surgery. The project is interactive and personalized and lets patients and doctors confirm that both have understood all the information provided before the operation.

It also gives the patient access to this information through multiple digital channels and lets the medical professional retain proof of their informed consent. As such, it reduces preoperative stress and helps surgeons preempt complaints about a lack of information.

Why is Ineo Digital interested in this solution?

Easy Care could easily be integrated into Ineo Digital’s existing e-health offering because it has been tested, approved and is nearly market-ready. Ineo Digital will meet their team to brainstorm about how to integrate the solution into their devices.

Ineo Digital will give Easy Care access to their commercial portfolio, which could mean opportunities to provide the solution for a wide range of its customers. And Easy Care provides Ineo Digital with a unique and innovative solution that makes its customer value proposition stand out even more.

So it’s definitely a win/win solution.