SmartAging Podcast – Key Takeaways: Business & Piloting Perspective

This episode hosted by IKIGAIA Ltd, features Peter Green (Rehaboo) and Antti Pellinen (Hoivita), two serial entrepreneurs building digital health solutions for elderly care and rehabilitation. Both companies are participating in the SmartAging project funded by Interreg Baltic Sea Region.

The Companies
Rehaboo is a camera-based exercise game platform (“like a Nintendo Wii on any device”) targeting elderly people in care homes, assisted living, and children’s hospitals. Hoivita provides passive, camera-free sensor-based monitoring for home care and assisted living — detecting what’s happening in the environment without cameras or heavy installation. The two companies describe themselves as “cousins” — addressing the same customers from complementary angles.

Why Real-Life Piloting Matters
Both founders were clear: piloting in real environments is essential in digital health.

Key reasons they highlighted:

1. It generates genuine feedback at the right stage — when the product is nearly ready but still improvable
2. Elderly users give brutally honest feedback, which is rare and valuable
3. Pilots create a natural sales pathway — customers who experience the solution firsthand are far easier to convert
4. It builds word-of-mouth and reference cases in a trust-driven sector.

The Bigger Picture: Silver Economy & Social Impact
The conversation touched on the structural challenge driving demand: aging populations, shrinking healthcare workforces, and underfunded public elder care. Both founders see digital health tools as essential — keeping people at home longer, safer, and more active. Importantly, they argued social impact and business success aren’t opposites: “If you make people happy, they’re prepared to pay.”

On EU Projects & Matchmaking
A recurring theme was the difficulty startups face in finding the right projects to join. The key insight: a good match means project targets align with the company’s own development roadmap — not just funding or customer access, but the whole package. The founders floated the idea of a “matchmaking platform” for companies and EU projects, noting nothing like public tendering portals currently exists for this.

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