We at Careium have a clear ambition – to be the knowledge leader and market leader for technology-enabled care in Europe.
I would like to take the opportunity to introduce our new company name – Careium. It is the coming together of three long-established telecare businesses: Centra, Welbeing and Eldercare. Our new name conveys ourselves as an ‘essential element’ for vulnerable people that rely on us to deliver the help they need, when they need it.
From my standpoint, having been in post since last November, it is an exciting time to join the business – and indeed the industry. Whilst new to technology-enabled care, I’m not new to care. I’m cognisant to the range of issues we’re all facing including a growing elderly population living longer with greater health and care needs, an increasing government funding gap with an onus on private individuals to pick up the slack, an NHS under considerable pressure exacerbated by the pandemic, and increasingly demanding service level expectations (rightly so) from customers. Add to all of this the additional telecare-specific challenge in moving from analogue to digital over the next few years and I think we can all agree that there is a lot we need to get right as a sector.
As Careium, we are fortunate to be part of a broader organisation with presence in the likes of Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and France. Together with my European colleagues, we have a clear ambition to leverage one another’s expertise and experience to become a knowledge leader for technology-enabled care, trusted by our customers to find solutions. Previously Doro Care, our separation from the Doro Phones business means I’m confident we will reach our full potential and address the challenges ahead. As Careium we can combine our own products with those of third parties to offer a more tailored solution.
Our solutions cover the full range of hardware, software and services including social alarms, monitoring centres, emergency response, technicians, virtual checks and proprietary software platforms. Our priorities are to continue to grow organically and through acquisitions, streamline operations and develop new technical solutions that are proactive, predictive and preventative.
Here in the UK, the government has set out the next steps of a social care reform journey that challenges us all to consider a new vision for social care. This vision seeks to shift historical default thinking away from residential care towards options that promote greater independence through realistic alternatives that enable people to live well at home. Essential to this vision is a range of policies that encourage investment and innovation across the sector. Careium has already taken up this challenge and we are committed to working alongside others in the social care ecosystem to help make this vision a reality. We are focused on introducing and enabling technology to facilitate independence. And we will strive to meet our customers’ increasingly demanding expectations of how unobtrusive and easy-to-use technology can and should improve quality of care and more importantly deliver peace of mind.