Stop pitching health tech. Start setting the table.
Designing for people who can least afford a product that almost works
Every conference is full of brilliant pilots. Award-winning apps. Beautiful prototypes. Then most of them quietly die. Not because the idea was wrong, but because nobody worked out how to get real users, busy care professionals and slow-moving organisations to actually adopt them. The space between a promising pilot and real-world implementation is where good ideas go to disappear.
That gap gets wider when your users are vulnerable: someone living with tinnitus, someone with a severe disability, an older person sliding toward isolation. They cannot wait for version three. They will not shout the loudest in a user test. And they are exactly who health tech most needs to get right.
At this edition of the EHV Innovation Café, join Sophie Asveld and Do van Rijn to explore what it actually takes to cross that gap, and why the people we design for belong at the table while we do it.
Featuring
Sophie Asveld (Hulan / Onda Innovaties)
Designs from the human outward: taking on sensitive, niche groups (tinnitus, disability, illness) and co-creating with them until the product genuinely fits their lives.
Do van Rijn (Active@Age)
Designs from the system inward: forty years of enterprise IT architecture, now serving a single humane idea: turning aging from a burden into a community asset.
One starts with one vulnerable user and designs outward. The other starts with the system and architects inward. Both are obsessed with the same question: why is the idea always the easy part?
That is exactly the conversation we want to have.
Because at the EHV Innovation Cafe, the discussion is not the afterthought. It is the main act.
We are Inclusive by Default and Give to Grow.
Stop pitching health tech. Start setting the table.
@ Kazerne Downtown Eindhoven
Walk in 17:30, Start 18:00
English spoken, Free entrance, Open to All
Speakers
Sophie Asveld
Innovation Specialist at Hulan / Founder of Onda Innovatiese
Superpower
Getting a good idea past the pilot: co-creating with vulnerable users until the product actually fits the life it is meant for.
Bio
Sophie Asveld is an Innovation Specialist at Hulan and runs her own healthcare-innovation practice, Onda Innovaties. She specialises in developing products and services for sensitive or niche target groups, with a relentless focus on the fit between what users actually need and what finally ships.
At Hulan she helped launch Freequency, an award-winning augmented-reality game that helps people manage tinnitus. With over 56,000 downloads, it won the Dutch Game Award for Best Applied Game and the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs, and became a real step toward greater autonomy for people living with tinnitus. Earlier in her career she brought Pillo, a game controller for people with severe multiple disabilities, and the ParelQup, a weighted breast prosthesis, to market, each in close collaboration with the people they were made for.
Her throughline: the great idea is the easy part. The hard part is getting users, care professionals and organisations on board, and turning a promising pilot into something that works in the real world.
Statement
“I believe that regenerative futures depend on healthy systems: social, ecological, economic and political. Healthy systems are built on strong, diverse relatio“What I find most interesting is the gap between a great idea and something that actually works in practice. How do you get users, care professionals and organisations on board? What does it take to go from a promising pilot to real-world implementation, especially when your end users are often in vulnerable situations?”nships. What creates, maintains or transforms those relationships is what I seek to understand.”
Do van Rijn
Functional Architect, Active@Age / Four decades in enterprise IT (Philips, Atos)
Superpower
Bringing enterprise-grade architecture to a grassroots social mission: making a warm, human idea robust enough to actually run.
Bio
Do van Rijn spent his career in the machine room of enterprise IT. After studying at TU/e and earning his doctorate, he joined Philips, and went on to spend decades designing large-scale IT systems, most recently at Atos. Two years ago he retired, and promptly filled his calendar with volunteer work.
One of those threads led him to our EHV Innovation Café, where he met Hans Houf, the founder of Active@Age. Do is now the functional architect behind the platform: an ambitious attempt to turn aging from a healthcare burden into a community asset, by matching older people who need a hand with older people who have time, skills and experience to give, in a safe, trusted, member-only environment where growing older means growing more connected, not less.
It is a deeply human mission handed to a systems thinker. His question: how do you give a warm, social idea the cold, rigorous architecture it needs to actually work, for people who can least afford software that doesn’t?
Statement
“After forty years of building systems for businesses, I wanted to build something that helps people stay active and connected as they grow older. The technology is the easy part. The real challenge is trust, and getting the design right for the people who deserve our care most.”
We are very good at having ideas. Eindhoven, especially, is very good at building things: prototypes, pilots, demos, proofs of concept. The region’s growing focus on health tech has produced an extraordinary amount of promise.
But promise is not the same as practice. The story nobody tells on stage is the one that happens after the pilot: the months of getting care professionals to trust a new tool, of fitting it into organisations that already feel overloaded, of discovering that real users behave nothing like the test group. This is the gap between a great idea and something that actually works, and it is where most health-tech innovation quietly ends.
The gap is hardest to cross precisely where it matters most: when the people you are designing for are in vulnerable situations. Someone living with chronic tinnitus. Someone with a severe multiple disability. An older person whose world is slowly shrinking toward the walls of one room. These users cannot afford a product that almost works. They are rarely the loudest voice in a co-creation session. And they are exactly the people health tech exists to serve.
Tonight we bring together two people who live in that gap from opposite ends.
Sophie Asveld designs from the human outward. She takes on sensitive, niche target groups that others find too small or too difficult, and co-creates with them until the product genuinely fits their lives: a tinnitus game with tens of thousands of users, a controller for people with severe disabilities, a prosthesis developed hand-in-hand with the women who would wear it.
Do van Rijn designs from the system inward. After forty years architecting enterprise IT at Philips and Atos, he is now the functional architect behind Active@Age, a platform that reframes aging as a community asset rather than a healthcare burden, matching older people who need a hand with older people who have time, skill and experience to give. Fittingly, Do found this mission at the Innovation Café itself.
Co-creation and architecture. Empathy and infrastructure. Starting with one person, and starting with the whole system. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient on its own.
So what does it actually take to get from a beautiful idea to something that works in a real life? Who has to be at the table? What do we owe the people who can least afford our prototypes? And is the gap a problem to be engineered away, or the place where the real design begins?
Our city is full of hidden Tech & Design gems that fuel transformation. Now is the time to unite their superpowers. What visions do they hold for creating an attractive, sustainable world for us and future generations? What groundbreaking experiments and prototypes are they developing to boost our society forward? How can we learn from each other and contribute to this shared mission? Join us for an inspiring event where ideas and connections come to life!
Join the EHV Innovation Café Tech & Design Meetup
Do you want be a part of the Future of Eindhoven? Mark the event in your calendar and secure your free ticket here. Walk in is also possible but the seats for the debat are limited. Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
25 June 2026
17:30 Walk-in and networking, we’ll offer a free drink and a bite
18:00 Introduction to the Special Guests followed by a moderated debate
19:00 Networking
20:00 Meet-up dinner with the speakers
English spoken, of course