Disabled child enables business

Zealand Care develops assistive technology for the disabled. As the father of a disabled child himself, director Bjarne Henneman has learnt to understand his customers.

Elderly and disabled people are often offered standard solutions which are not adapted to their individual needs. On the whole, this is due to the wish to keep costs down on the part of municipalities.

Zealand Care was established in Denmark in 1996 with the aim of improving matters and extending the choice of services and assistive technology available to the elderly and disabled.

Zealand Care approaches the problem in two ways: Firstly, the company focuses its business on creating care products which are adapted to the individual needs of the elderly and disabled. And secondly, it develops an advanced computer management system, which can be used by municipalities to administer the assistive technology.

A change in legislation paved the way
The idea to establish the company arose after a change in legislation, which paved the way for public authorities to invest in so-called joint stock companies (companies which are owned jointly by the public and private sectors). A specific result of the new legislation was a public-private fund which invested in assistive technology.

The objective was to ensure that the elderly and disabled actually had full access to the assistive technology available. This way, new health needs could be met in the municipalities. Zealand Care employs designers who develop new products to meet the new needs of consumers. The products are mainly marketed and sold to municipalities.

Vision of effective leadership
The director of Zealand Care, Bjarne Henneman, runs a company which is 100 per cent privately-owned. As the father of a disabled child, he has first-hand experience of many of the problems that Zealand Care is working to solve.

He is also driven by a vision of transferring several effective management systems from the private sector to the municipalities. The company has generally held on to much of the expertise acquired through working closely with the public sector during its time as a public-private hybrid.

The close collaboration with the public sector has given the company an advantage as it is easier to understand the needs of the municipalities and predict how the customer group will think.