The Munich-based startup Cliniserve aims to make everyday life easier for hospital nurses. The digital system is designed to create more time for individual patients and reduce administrative burdens. One of the three founders, Julian Nast-Kolb, answers our 7 questions.
1. Who are you and what do you do? Please briefly introduce yourself and your product!
We are Cliniserve We want to make the daily work of hospital nurses easier. The team consists of Jaakko (27, TUM Business Administration, from Finland), Quirin (26, Electrical Engineering), and me, Julian (27, Economics).
We met on CDTM We met in an interdisciplinary supplementary study program in Technology Management at TUM and LMU. We all wanted to have a positive impact on society and knew there was much room for improvement in hospital care processes. Among other things, studies have shown that nurses can only spend 15 percent of their working time caring for patients! We want to change that and thus contribute to addressing the nursing shortage.
“Making the world a little better”
Our first product allows patients to send requests to their nurses using their own smartphones. This saves the nurse time because they can bring the patient what they need right away. Or they can delegate requests to service staff and provide feedback to the patient if they need to handle less urgent requests later. The existing emergency button will, of course, remain where it is for emergencies, but our solution will reduce the workload.
In the long term, we want to delegate all requests and tasks automatically so that nursing staff can once again concentrate fully on patient care and service and administrative tasks are automated or handled by other employees.
2. But that's been around for a long time!
Of course, all startups say that, but in our case, there's actually nothing like that yet. That surprised us too! Currently, there's only the red alarm button on the bed, which patients are only supposed to press in emergencies and therefore avoid as long as possible. The baby monitor-like call-back function of some nurse call systems isn't used because it's uncomfortable for patients to discuss problems in front of their roommates, and it actually made it harder for the nurses to work.
Clinics are willing to spend money on this
3. What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Definitely the technical requirements for market entry. Many hospitals in Germany have only just begun to embrace digitalization. We often have to wait months before we can deploy our product because there is no Wi-Fi or mobile network on the wards yet.
In general, however, all hospitals see a need to support nursing care. They are also willing to spend money on it, as they are finding it difficult to find fully trained nurses these days.
4. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
Although we have only been actively involved in sales since last summer, and the sales cycle usually lasts over a year, we have already signed up our first paying customers. So things are going really well! By the end of the year, we want to have at least 30 clinics under contract. In addition, we have also been involved in the EXIST Founder's Grant promoted.
5. What does Munich mean to you?
Munich offers us the best conditions, especially thanks to our networks through the CDTM and the two universities. Especially in the B2B sector, the value of the many companies and clinics located here should not be underestimated. This is also evident in the many successful startups in this sector. Furthermore, the work-life balance is unbeatable, thanks to the proximity to the mountains and the beautiful surrounding countryside.
With hard work and perseverance
6. How will your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
Hospital care represents a 17 billion euro market in Germany alone. Even though it's a slow market, with hard work and perseverance, we will tap into a large portion. But it's also very important to us that we can truly do good with our work in nursing—a profession that has been hit hard for years, but is incredibly important to our society. After all, we've always wanted to make the world a little better.
7. Hiking or beer garden?
There's only one right answer: From hiking straight to the beer garden to relax with Russian sausages and a snack! We just had the winter version again, with mulled wine at the homemade ice bar, during our strategy weekend in Carinthia.
