Dit event is in het Engels, dus de tekst hier ook — wel zo makkelijk. Designing for people who can least afford a product that almost works.
Every conference is full of brilliant pilots. Award-winning apps. Beautiful prototypes. Then most of them quietly die. Not because the idea was wrong, but because nobody worked out how to get real users, busy care professionals and slow-moving organisations to actually adopt them. The space between a promising pilot and real-world implementation is where good ideas go to disappear.
That gap gets wider when your users are vulnerable: someone living with tinnitus, someone with a severe disability, an older person sliding toward isolation. They cannot wait for version three. They will not shout the loudest in a user test. And they are exactly who health tech most needs to get right.
At this edition of the EHV Innovation Café, join Sophie Asveld and Do van Rijn to explore what it actually takes to cross that gap, and why the people we design for belong at the table while we do it.
Featuring
Sophie Asveld (Hulan / Onda Innovaties)
Designs from the human outward: taking on sensitive, niche groups (tinnitus, disability, illness) and co-creating with them until the product genuinely fits their lives.
Do van Rijn (Active@Age)
Designs from the system inward: forty years of enterprise IT architecture, now serving a single humane idea: turning aging from a burden into a community asset.
One starts with one vulnerable user and designs outward. The other starts with the system and architects inward. Both are obsessed with the same question: why is the idea always the easy part?
We are Inclusive by Default and Give to Grow.
Stop pitching health tech. Start setting the table.
@ Kazerne Downtown Eindhoven
Walk in 17:30, Start 18:00
English spoken, Free entrance, Open to All
Sophie Asveld is an Innovation Specialist at Hulan and runs her own healthcare-innovation practice, Onda Innovaties. She specialises in developing products and services for sensitive or niche target groups, with a relentless focus on the fit between what users actually need and what finally ships.
At Hulan she helped launch Freequency, an award-winning augmented-realitygame that helps people manage tinnitus. With over 56,000 downloads, it won the Dutch Game Award for Best Applied Game and the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs, and became a real step toward greater autonomy for people living with tinnitus. Earlier in her career she brought Pillo, a game controller for people with severe multiple disabilities, and the ParelQup, a weighted breast prosthesis, to market, each in close collaboration with the people they were made for.
Her throughline: the great idea is the easy part. The hard part is getting users, care professionals and organisations onboard, and turning a promising pilot into something that works in the real world.
“What I find most interesting is the gap between a great idea and something that actually works in practice. How do you get users, care professionals and organisations on board? What does it take to go from a promising pilot to real-world implementation, especially when your end users are often in vulnerable situations?”
Do van Rijn spent his career in the machine room of enterprise IT. After studying at TU/e and earning his doctorate, he joined Philips, and went on to spend decades designing large-scale IT systems, most recently at Atos. Two years ago he retired, and promptly filled his calendar with volunteer work.
One of those threads led him to our EHV Innovation Café, where he met Hans Houf, the founder of Active@Age. Do is now the functional architect behind the platform: an ambitious attempt to turn aging from a healthcare burden into a community asset, by matching older people who need a hand with older people who have time, skills and experience to give, in a safe, trusted, member-only environment where growing older means growing more connected, not less.
It is a deeply human mission handed to a systems thinker. His question: how do you give a warm, social idea the cold, rigorous architecture it needs to actually work, for people who can least afford software that doesn't?
“After forty years of building systems for businesses, I wanted to build something that helps people stay active and connected as they grow older. The technology is the easy part. The real challenge is trust, and getting the design right for the people who deserve our care most.”
Our events are open to all. Expect an evening with inspiring ideas, critical questions, and imaginative alternatives to the status quo. Mark the event in your calendar and secure your ticket here. Walk in is also possible but the seats for the debat are limited. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
17:30 Walk-in and networking, we’ll offer a free drink and a bite
18:00 Intro to the Special Guests followed by a moderated debate
19:00 Networking
19:30 Posibility to join the Meet-up dinner with the speakers