Bartiméus Impact Project

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Within the ‘Innovation’ program, Bartiméus – an organization for people who are blind or partially sighted – is active on several projects and themes. This is also done in collaboration with the research group Digital Life of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. For example, there were collaborations in the past, which resulted in projects such as: the “EyeBeacons”: https: //www.digitallifecentre.nl/projecten/eyebeacons-wayfinding-in-public-spaces project, “the smart doorbell”: https : //www.hva.nl/content/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/2017/01/slimme-deurbel.html and the Bootcamp app.

The activities for the innovation projects are diverse, as they are carried out throughout the Netherlands by different customer groups within Bartiméus and different target groups/ types of people also participate in these activities.

In order to achieve greater impact with such innovation projects, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is conducting research into relevant impact factors in 2021 together with Bartiméus.

In the first phase, a theoretical framework will be built up and in the second phase this framework will be tested with a practical test with existing innovation projects.

In the theoretical framework attention is paid to whether the desired impact can be determined in advance within the innovation program and how this can be measured during and at the end of a project. Challenges within the projects are the diversity of innovations and the phase of implementation in which the innovation takes place.

In addition, several questions play an important role such as:

• Is a product user-friendly enough?
• Is improvement visible in areas such as mobility or quality of life?
• Can more effective client contact be achieved?
• Can the implementation be rolled out within and outside the organization?
• And how sustainable is the implementation?

The theoretical framework will be tested in existing eHealth projects such as video calling and online training. In 2020, these projects were set up and implemented at an accelerated pace due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And it is expected that this acquired knowledge and developed methodologies will continue to be an important pillar within healthcare in the future.

At the end of the project, important insights will be obtained which impact can be generated within the innovation projects and how this can be measured – and also recorded in a report – so that more control can be done on this in the future.

Despite the fact that the research is mainly aimed at increasing the impact of Bartiméus activities, relevant results will be shared as much as possible with the entire sector.