Insight
4 min read
It seems trivial. But Harro Stokman, who worked on exactly this problem as a PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam, discovered that triviality is an illusion. Together with a few colleagues, he founded Euvision, a company that made headlines with an app that could classify photos on your phone. Dogs, cats, sailboats. In 2014, American chipmaker Qualcomm acquired the company.
After a few years at the tech giant, it was time for something different. AI had become considerably smarter in the interim. It was now possible to determine from moving images what people are doing. But Stokman was looking for an application that would matter to society.
His attention turned to elderly care. In Dutch nursing homes with a hundred residents, only three nurses often work at night. They spring into action when a sensor goes off, and frequently it turns out to be a false alarm. A pillow falling off a bed gives the same signal as a resident falling. Protocol also requires staff to enter every room a few times a night, simply to check that everything is fine.
Both scenarios are disruptive. For the resident, because of the broken night. For the caregiver who is called out unnecessarily. And for society, because this way of working consumes a great deal of manpower that simply is not available.
The numbers speak for themselves. The staffing shortage in Dutch healthcare will quadruple over the next ten years, from 66,400 in 2025 to 265,600 in 2034. [1] In nursing homes specifically, there is already a shortfall of 14,200 people. [2] A quarter of the current care workforce will retire within five years, while the number of elderly people continues to grow.
"They were already using cameras and sensors in that sector, but it was all very outdated and generated a lot of false alarms." Harro Stokman [3]
In 2018, Stokman founded Kepler Vision Technologies as a spin-off of the University of Amsterdam. The product is called Kepler Night Nurse. It is a smart sensor mounted in a room that raises an alarm when something appears to be going wrong.
The difference from traditional sensors lies not in what the system sees, but in what it understands. The AI recognises whether someone is lying down, nearly falling, walking around, sitting on the floor, or leaving the room. It can tell the difference between someone going to the toilet and someone who actually needs assistance.
And the false alarms? One per sensor every three months. [3]
That may sound like a technical detail. But for a nurse who is disturbed dozens of times during a night shift by alarms that mean nothing, it is the difference between exhaustion and manageable nights. Alarm fatigue is a genuine problem in healthcare. After hundreds of false alarms, your response slows, or stops altogether.
A sensor in your bedroom that is always on. That sounds like a privacy nightmare. But Stokman turned the argument around.
The system does not recognise people, only activities. The sensor does not transmit images, only a text message when something is happening. And most importantly: a caregiver no longer has to enter the room every few hours to check whether everything is all right.
For many residents, that is actually an improvement to their privacy. No more physical intrusion during the night. No torch shining in their face. Monitoring only when it is needed.
"The system does not recognise people, only activities. A timely alarm can prevent a great deal of distress, but at least as important is the peace of mind it brings for both resident and caregiver." Harro Stokman [3]
Kepler now monitors more than 14,500 clients and is active in 26 European countries. [4] Revenue was approximately one million euros in 2023. Stokman aims to triple that figure each year for the next three years. With an investment of €1.5 million from ROM InWest and earlier funding from UvA Ventures and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the company has now raised more than €9.8 million in total. [4][5]
Healthcare tends to be cautious with new technology, Stokman observes. But he sees the emergence of competition as a positive sign. It means the market is taking the problem seriously.
The shift from a purely technical company to a care partner called for new faces who speak the language of the market. With the arrival of Stephanie van Rosmalen as CMO and Lex Erades as COO, Kepler has professionalised its team to support further growth. Their task is to ensure that the technology not only works in the lab, but is also genuinely embraced on the floor of the nursing home.
The story of Kepler Vision illustrates what becomes possible when academic expertise meets a concrete problem. Stokman started with the question of how a computer recognises a chair. Twenty years later, that same knowledge helps a nurse at three in the morning to know when she does need to get up, and when she does not.
For the Dutch AI scene, that is a lesson worth noting. The most valuable applications are not always found in the latest models, but in translating existing knowledge to places where it makes a real difference. A UvA spin-off helping nursing homes. An algorithm that once recognised chairs and now monitors human lives.
The complexity does not lie in the code. It lies in finding the right problem.
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