Innovation
Health research and innovation to improve the relevance and quality of care
Korian Group set up its the Medical Strategy and Health Innovation Department (MSHD) in January 2022. This move was necessary and made a lot of sense to address several issues. Innovation in health is a priority for public authorities in France (the Plan Innovation Santé 2030 they set in motion in June 2021, for instance, aims to rank France as Europe’s leading nation on this front). Accordingly, there are many incentives for investment in R&D and measures to support innovation in France (tax breaks for research, Haute Autorité de Santé innovation packages and, most recently, funding for experiments granted under article 51 of France’s law on financing social security).
Innovation is vital for a player such as Korian for reasons relating to science, strategy and foresight.
- Science: improve our patients’ medical treatment and care pathways, and contribute to upgrading training for medical and paramedical teams.
- Strategy: support medical expertise to enhance our appeal among patients as much as healthcare professionals (notably physicians).
- Foresight: identify and build on the trends that are shaping the future.
Korian is aiming to innovate in three priority areas revolving around demographics and public health, in order to address three challenges: population ageing, chronic diseases and mental health. Geriatrics (support for the elderly, Alzheimer's disease specialised care, palliative care). Rehabilitation (musculoskeletal, neurological, pulmonary, nutritional, cardiac ailments). Psychiatry and addiction medicine (burn-out, depression, addiction, eating disorders).
MSHD (the Medical Strategy and Health Innovation Department) intends to implement projects relating to the five priorities of medicine (preventive, personalised, predictive, participative, relevant). It is involving medical communities in Korian’s various host countries in efforts to move forward on three fronts:
- Diagnostics and therapeutics (non-drug treatments, AI and other new technologies, digital therapeutics);
- Pathways (care, health, life): telemedicine (remote consultation, expert consultation, monitoring, assistance and regulation), e-pathways, mobile teams, new activities (sleep, pain, etc.);
- Research and training (clinical trials, data collection).
Innovation in health: a challenge for society, a Korian priority
Innovation is at the very heart of Korian’s promise to bring the best of care, healthcare and hospitality at the side of the elderly and fragile people, their loved ones and our staff. Innovation at Korian means to constantly search to improve, optimize and sometimes even entirely reorganize our way of working brings us the guarantee that we keep evolving towards the best quality of care. In all our efforts on innovation we put our patients, residents and our employees in the center.
We believe in the strength of our employees and our teams, therefore we make sure that we inspire them and that our teams share their idea’s, needs and their insights internally. Inside our different digital and medical innovation accelerators we connect the dots between these defined needs, our corporate strategic goals and the new products and solutions we’ve discovered during our relentless search for innovation. Once a match is identified we define a project and bring the idea to life in a detailed study or a proof of concept.
Our innovation accelerators
Korian Innovation Hub, our innovation frontdoor
This platform is the online entry to connect to Korian as an external potential partner. Any suggestion for innovation is welcome there that is then distributed inside Korian and assessed before providing feedback.
We welcome all new products, solutions or invitations for collaboration which could lead to an improvement of care for our patients, residents and by our employees, We asses all incoming requests and commit ourselves to give back a transparent evaluation and potential next step.
If you believe your solution or product could be a contribution for Korian’s activities, don’t hesitate to onboard it on our Korian Innovation Hub.
Korian Solutions, our digital agency
Korian Solutions is our internal digital agency, founded in 2018 on Korian France scope it scaled up the efforts since 2022 with the ambition to provide the 7 countries Korian is operating in with digital and technology expertise.
With our internal R&D we evaluate, test and develop our idea’s into real life products. Mobile Applications, IoT, Voice assistants, Digital Signage, Robotics, AI, … They have the experts in house to support our business on group and country level.
Korian Foundations, our scientific expertise
The Korian foundations want to strengthen social engagement and commit Korian to high-quality care and to the possibility of aging with dignity. To do so they use scientific methodologies to develop and run medical innovations independent or with research or industry partners. They provide the scientific medical expertise to drive our innovation programs.
Our e-Health Startups
To stimulate innovation, Korian has also built an ecosystem of start-ups to improve healthcare pathways in its facilities and enhance resident and patient comfort and safety.
Move In Med
Move In Med specialises in developing e-health services and tools to improve care for patients suffering from chronic diseases. The healthcare pathways it creates combine bespoke patient support and individually selected resources in a secure online space. Move In Med in particular has developed and markets UNIQ, a web-based platform to coordinate care and monitor patients remotely. Move In Med also provides training for healthcare professionals in new fields relating to healthcare coordination.
Technosens
Designs and develops ergonomic digital solutions that promote social bonds and interactions between residents or patients and their families, in clinics or nursing home and that can be adapted to the home.
Omedys
Omedys is a start-up that is supporting the rollout of Télémédical Solution, a new model for general medical practice registered with local authorities.
Omedys provides access to assisted and augmented remote consultations in underserved areas where patients do not have a general practitioner or face unreasonable delays when they need to see one. Patients in a facility near their home are assisted by a health professional during the remote consultation with physicians in a Télémédical Solution practice in the same region.
This start-up organises and supervises telemedicine through augmented assisted consultations in facilities set up in the middle of medical “deserts” and connected to the region’s Télémédical Solution practice.
Medicalib
Omedys is a start-up that is supporting the rollout of Télémédical Solution, a new model for general medical practice registered with local authorities.
Our Innovation Partnerships
A few examples of the partnerships, innovation networks and programmes we are involved in:
INSPIRE
Inspire is a public-private research programme revolving around biology and ageing in good health. Its goal is to constitute a bio-resource platform bridging the gaps between animal models and humans, cells and individuals, and research and clinical care. Inspire provides clinical care, and biological and technological resources for R&D into ageing for academics and businesses to take on one of society’s biggest worldwide challenges: healthy ageing and preventing dependence.
E-IT Health
EIT Health is a ‘knowledge and innovation community funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The idea behind is that innovation flourishes best when the right people are brought together. Therefore they organize their initiatives on the principle that when experts from business, research and education work together as one, an optimal environment for innovation is created.
As a healthcare operator Korian we’re participating in this ecosystem as a business stakeholder. Participating in workshops, innovation projects and have an share our business insights is our contribution in this platform.
Ambient Assisted Living
As member of several innovation project consortiums Korian is participating in many projects during the last years. In most projects we’re involved in the design thinking and in the field tests. Thanks to our diversity and size we have an interesting test location for almost every project.
Cluster Salut Mental
In Spain we’re member of the Cluster Salut Mental, here we work together with public authorities, healthcare industry partners and research institutes to develop new solutions. We share our own expertise with the intention to trigger new innovations.
A FEW EXAMPLES OF INNOVATION AT KORIAN
Among others:
- Deploying Silver Fit systems in nursing homes and geriatric clinics, enabling functional training and cognitive stimulation, in one-on-one and group sessions.
- Robotics to intensify rehabilitation by repeating movements around an action that the patient has in mind, has seen or has done before, and compensating for some motor neuron deficiencies.
- Omedys telemedicine in nursing homes and clinics to provide medical care every day throughout the Korian network.
- e-pathways and e-rehabilitation using the Move in Med communicating and secure coordination platform, including the COPD e-pathway, burn-out e-pathway, post-stroke e-pathway, fragility e-pathway and obesity e-pathway, notably through experiments under article 51 of France’s law on financing social security (on care for COPD, surgical treatment of obesity and patients suffering from chronic neurological disorders).
- Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a neurostimulation technique to treat moderate to severe depression in cases where drug therapy is contraindicated or the patient refuses it, severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, addictions and pain, in medical, rehabilitation and psychiatric clinics.
- Virtual reality therapy in medical, rehabilitation and psychiatric clinics, and nursing homes: exposing patients to anxiety-inducing situations helps to deal with some issues such as phobias or panic attacks.
- Phototherapy.
- Therapeutic window: an immersive experience similar to non-drug therapy, to soothe people with severe cognitive impairments and help them reconnect with their space and time bearings (sunrise, cooking scenes around mealtimes, etc.).
- Kaspard image-free fall-detection technology to prevent falls, which are one of the main causes of early dependence.
- The Snoezelen stimulation and relaxation therapy trolley.