The Covid-19 epi­dem­ic led to hos­pi­tal over­crowd­ing and high­light­ed the dif­fi­cul­ty of main­tain­ing links between patients and their fam­i­lies. The start-up BOT­de­sign has cho­sen to com­mit itself to the fight against Covid-19 by donat­ing tools to help hos­pi­tals over­come these problems. 

In 2017, Olivi­er Thuil­lart, a grad­u­ate of UTC and Dr. Jean-Louis Fraysse, with their per­fect knowl­edge of the field of health and chron­ic patholo­gies, found­ed BOT­de­sign and launched the devel­op­ment of tools that com­ply with French leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing health data: A Chat­bot for obstet­ri­cal pre-anaes­the­sia, or for the fol­low-up of dia­bet­ic patients, instant and secure mes­sag­ing for health­care needs; the projects fol­low one anoth­er for the start-up. 

In 2020, Olivi­er Thuil­lart and his team are mobilised in order to adapt their tools and devel­op new ones to best respond to the issues raised by the epi­dem­ic. IZY­call and Cov­i­bot are exam­ples. The two solu­tions already in place at Toulouse Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal. “We have also set up a chat­bot ser­vice for the Amy­otroph­ic Lat­er­al Scle­ro­sis (ALS) depart­ment, which enables doc­tors to mon­i­tor the morale and state of health of these par­tic­u­lar­ly at-risk patients,” adds Olivi­er. A fund-rais­ing cam­paign (€1 mil­lion) is being finalised before the sum­mer to enable nation­wide distribution. 

Such tools will undoubt­ed­ly become more wide­spread, as the cur­rent health sit­u­a­tion demon­strates the val­ue of set­ting up remote and secure mon­i­tor­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools between patients, their fam­i­lies and med­ical staff. 

IZYCALL

This secure mobile video­con­fer­enc­ing solu­tion enables patients to be con­nect­ed from their hos­pi­tal room to their fam­i­ly or a doc­tor, or to a health pro­fes­sion­al. The appli­ca­tion has already reg­is­tered more than a thou­sand con­nec­tions since the begin­ning of April. 

COVIBOT

This con­ver­sa­tion­al robot car­ries out the Min­istry of Health’s dai­ly ques­tion­naire with the Covid-19 patient at home to assess his state of health. Depend­ing on the answers, it can accel­er­ate the fre­quen­cy of the ques­tion­naire and alert the med­ical team in charge of the case-file.