Studies show that the majority of older people wants to age in place to preserve dignity, social inclusion and lifestyle. HoplàCare allows for finding domiciliary care services in line with personal care plan and needs, cutting out the middleman. Caregivers professionalism is assured by a proprietary algorithm. HoplàCare integrates informal and formal care by coordinating different care providers.

(Pitched: 15/04/2018)

One Page Summary

Based on the studies carried out, listening to users’ needs, so far to enhance to elder loved ones to live safe at home and provide greater peace of mind for relatives, beside that some solutions are already offered on the market, CaringMate, in the light of the positive results of the first trials, offers a novel and full-fledged solution following an integrated approach to the ageing in place issue: HoplàCare (www.hoplacare.com), a new paradigm of e-marketplace that integrates long-term and social care services for the elderly and disabled and assisted living technologies.
Finding the right match between elderly persons searching for help and care-providers, HoplàCare® facilitates the instant booking of a customized care service and supports care-providers to offer more responsive and flexible services, giving to the smaller and unestablished a transparent, easy channel to reach new patients.

Hiring a care provider, finding that perfect care match, in particular for a long-term care relationship, is a very delicate task generally faced with self-hiring, taking into account peer suggestions (word of mouth) or general practitioner' hints in the case of professionals. Both options, agency or self-hiring, for care seekers have pro and cons (see figure above). 

Instead, care providers need to: i) find new channels for acquiring new clients working as freelance, ii) exploit their professionalism and expertise, iii) fully book their agenda, avoiding late or missed payments. Needs that traditional channels do not fully satisfy.

All these issues have been confirmed by the survey we launched among over 900 caregivers and 1.000 families in UK (15% of response rate). Moreover, the following additional inputs have been identified:

Main competitor and competitive solutions
The competition arena for the matching platform counts several players in USA who have consolidated their presence on this market such as Care.com (over 9,5 million of caregivers reached in 10 years of activity) and Carelinx, while in Europe some new players have been launching new platforms on the market especially in UK, but none of them offers a full-fledged service as HoplàCare® does.



Below the main market barriers that we expect to encounter in the near years and some possible remedial actions.

HoplàCare Value Chain
Being a two-sided business model, the main challenge of CaringMate will be to build up the needed critical mass to ensure the service efficacy and financial sustainability. This is a recognised “chicken and egg problem”, to start from engaging suppliers and generating “user demand” is fundamental to spur a virtuous cycle: more users bring more suppliers and vice versa, creating positive network effects.
In this chain a crucial role will be played by the collaborations with key stakeholder groups (see below the main stakeholder groups identified for accessing the EU market and the tactics for engaging them).
Several contacts are already in place with several organizations mainly among care agencies and training/recruiting one (see attachments).

Solution
HoplàCare (trade mark registered in UK), is the first platform that combines the matching power of marketplace, the proprietary algorithm to vet/assess caregivers and the possibility to connect a smart camera for the remote monitoring of care supplied at home, offering to families all that is needed to properly take care of their elderly loved ones: from recruiting the best care provider and support service, to being always connected with their loved one and his caregiver/helper, even benefiting from a real time home care monitoring service.

Instant booking with vetted professionals/helpers/volunteers
Care seekers (elderly persons or on their behalf relatives) are asked to register themselves to the platform; their profile will collect data and relevant medical info and advice regarding the requested services to correctly evaluate care needs. Then, they can proceed with seeking care services in line with their care plan/needs thanks to a search engine able to refine results by an advanced ranking algorithm and a competing pricing system. Professionals/volunteers are displayed in the result page in order of reliability/price ranking and matching with the requested timeslots, so that the user can verify immediately availability, fares and ratings. The care seeker can compare offers and book the service in less than 5 minutes. All care providers are vetted, certified thanks to a proprietary algorithm using the info/documentation proving skills and experience uploaded by the caregivers and checked with third parties services (www.jumio.com/trusted-identity/netverifyt; www.trulioo.com) as well as with a remote automated interview and the feedback from other users.

The contractual issues and invoicing, between parties, are established within the platform as well as the payments (Administration suite).

HoplàCare® approach is not diffused yet and it pledges to be a very profitable business.