Anggel’Dom, a home-based care service that’s designed to improve living conditions for elderly people wishing to remain in their own homes, was launched in 2017 and one of the four co-founders is a woman: Nicole Mourain-Jacquin.
Having spent a quarter of her life in hospitals, in 2002 Nicole Jacquin decided to resume training. After graduating, she managed various retirement homes in the French capital. She began working as a geriatrician, a profession that she had already been practicing part-time.
Passionate about her job, Nicole Jacquin nevertheless laments what she sees as a culture of “hypocrisy around the subject of end-of-life” in France. The question is “often taboo and is rarely raised by doctors, despite its primordial importance; especially given that France has an aging population”, she said. Determined to help make up for these failings, in 2010 she founded the National Association of Geriatricians and Gerontologists – Liberal Professionals, which she presided over for six years. This collective came up with a system designed to facilitate the sharing of medical data of elderly persons living at home, via a tablet. Through this technology, medical practitioners who visit the patient at home – doctors, physiotherapists, dentists – can record various data such as prescriptions, heart rate and recent incidents which enables them to keep each other updated. Since the tablet is connected 24/7 to a specialised platform, both family and doctors can be informed of any problems. The system helps limit unwanted hospital stays, as well as overmedication. In 2016, it was tested on 30 patients over an eighteen-month period.
The findings were conclusive. Nicole Jacquin and three of her collaborators – one of whom was her husband – decided to commercialize the service under the name Anggel’Dom. Initially limited to a few departments in the Greater Paris region, the start-up has recently spread to the capital and has a dozen clients on its books, scattered between Paris and Neuilly. Jacquin is optimistic, especially when she compares the cost of Anggel’Dom (180 euros per month minimum) with the fees of a place in a retirement home.
Her hope for the coming years is to extend the scope of Anggel’Dom to people with disabilities and those suffering from chronic illnesses, both in France and internationally. It’s a natural step for Jacquin, who for the last seven years has been dividing her time between France and Morocco; a destination she chose for its gentle pace of living and proximity to Paris.
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Source: Egypt Independent, 7 March 2018