91 Dutch healthcare institutions are addressing the shortage of healthcare staff with artificial intelligence

But why aren’t these institutions distributed more evenly? Why are they so concentrated? I can think of four reasons:

1. There is hardly a shortage of healthcare workers in cities

The graph shows that most of the healthcare facilities using our software are located in rural areas. The rural population is aging more rapidly. This is because young people are moving to the cities, where the jobs are. They aren’t becoming healthcare providers, and if they do, they do so in the cities. This means a heavier workload for the healthcare providers who remain in rural areas. As a result, more healthcare providers in rural areas are quitting their jobs in healthcare because they’re stressed. This leads to a domino effect. Because our software helps healthcare organizations address the shortage of healthcare staff, our technology is being rolled out first in these rural areas. That’s what this map shows.

2. The word-of-mouth effect

Our software is always sold through partners—that is, through system integrators. Most of them have had a relationship with their clients—the healthcare institutions—for ten or twenty years. In the northern part of North Holland, we saw one of these partners—let’s call her System Integrator #1—register Healthcare Institution #1. Next, we saw Integrator #2 sign up the healthcare facility’s neighbor. And then we saw Integrator #3 sign up the other neighbor. Were we just lucky? Or was it word-of-mouth, because the healthcare providers at these neighboring healthcare institutions were talking to each other? I run the risk of expressing this wishful thinking the way a drunk uses a lamppost—not for light, but for support 🙂

3. Adoption of our technology is slow because it takes a long time for hardware to be replaced

This map should have shown a hundred times more healthcare facilities, which would have eliminated the clutter. The renowned MIT professor of robotics, Rodney Brooks, argues that software adoption happens a trillion times faster than hardware adoption. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months. It will take another 30 years before all cars are electric, while the U.S. Air Force is still flying 60-year-old B-52s. Our artificial intelligence software, called Kepler Night Nurse, runs on smart sensors. The software detects falls with unprecedented reliability. Our software also helps prevent falls. In this way, Kepler Night Nurse helps overcome staffing shortages, as artificial intelligence now also cares for the elderly. However, the smart sensors on which our software runs require physical cabling and installation. The map shows that it takes time for nursing homes to replace their old and outdated hardware. As a side note regarding outdated hardware: our software processes video from any cameras. In that case, the system integrator installs servers on-site. Our software also runs seamlessly on state-of-the-art cameras with an onboard AI chip. More on that later. Although I hope that within a few years 100% of our software will be running in an integrated manner, it’s quite possible that our on-premises solution will continue to run for another 30 years.

4. Care facilities within the same nursing home are geographically close to one another

How do you track the use of our software? Very often, a single healthcare facility uses our software at multiple locations. In that case, do you use the ZIP code of the healthcare organization’s headquarters, or do you use the ZIP codes of the individual locations? We opted for the latter, which contributed to the cluttered appearance.

These are the reasons why the adoption of our software in the Netherlands is not geographically uniform. Has the map piqued your interest in our software? You can try it out for free for one month, integrated with the Mobotix C71 camera. Has your system integrator not yet decided on this type of technology? Is the system integrator recommending that you use an alternative? If so, ask them to test our solution and compare it with the others. We can provide test scenarios that go beyond simply testing basic cases.