Welcome to Kirsty Meets!
Each month I meet key stakeholders and business leaders in the social care sector. This month I met Nuno Almeida, Founder and CEO of Nourish Care. I caught up with Nuno to discuss what makes a start-up successful, technology, and the future of care.
So Nuno, can you tell us a little bit about how and why you started Nourish Care?
It’s very much a human story for me. I grew up near one of the largest mental hospitals in Portugal, my parents shared a boundary with the place. The neighbourhood was full of people walking around in their pyjamas and my parents never passed judgement. They were part of our community, our neighbours and we interacted with them on a daily basis. I was a child taught to care about people and I was also good at maths and building things. I studied computer science and AI but surrounded myself with artists and misfits. I started my first business at 16, created another at 18 and by the time I went to university, I was working for NASA. I ended up working in defence and aerospace, but I wasn’t passionate about it. I wanted to build software that made a difference. My wife had always worked in healthcare, so I started reading about social care and felt drawn to the sector, so much so, I worked undercover as a care assistant for three months. When I saw what care was like on a ground level I knew I wanted to build software that would make the job easier for carers and improve the experience and outcome for those in their care.
Why do you think Nourish has been so successful?
My hypothesis for our success is that we didn’t follow the route that most software start-ups do, which is to identify how the product will be used, identify who is going to pay for it and optimise the functionality with those factors in mind. In social care, the carers don’t pay for the app and neither do the people in care, but they are pivotal. It takes a lot of legwork to understand the ecosystem and the dynamics of how a care team operates. Understanding the mindset of the key people and designing software that is holistic enough to unite everybody to a common end is vital to improve the well-being of the person in care.
“Understanding the mindset of key people and designing software that is holistic enough to unite everybody to a common end is vital to improve the well-being of the person in care.”
Nourish has recently announced the acquisition of CarePlanner – can you tell us a bit more about this?
This partnership was done with a view to improving our product, which in turn, improves levels of adult care. As such, it is set to radically improve the safety of the health care system for residents and staff. The entire sector will benefit from this, including the NHS. And finally, CarePlanner is homecare planning software and this is a timely acquisition for us as the community is the place where magic needs to happen. People who are being discharged from hospitals, for example, need to be supported by a platform that is used by both care workers and hospital care teams. We are in the process of constantly evolving these integrations so that we can continue to deliver greater value in the future.
How is care going to change in the future?
Alzheimer’s and dementia were barely mentioned 20 years ago and are becoming increasingly prevalent. This is going to shape our culture and we need to come up with solutions that enable us to care well for our ageing population.
And finally Nuno, where can we find out more about Nourish Care?
You can visit us here: https://nourishcare.com