In SME Phase 1, the accomplished objective was to advance in the development moving from TRL4 to TRL6; to conduct a feasibility study to assess the market potential and define a commercial strategy; to identify potential customers and to define a business plan to attract investors and key commercial partners.
After having designed the general behaviour and look and feel of the application, we have begun a test plan with therapists, in order to review the therapy system (TRL5); and with patients accompanied by their therapists (TRL6). The testing has been done incrementally, so each step benefits from the feedback from the previous steps and learnings have end up with new improvements introduced to the product to be re-tested in next step in an agile development way.
First test: therapists (isolated activities). Aimed at polishing the technical aspects of game development, game engines and dynamics from the point of view of their therapy value, and the backend with positive feedback and promising results.
Second test: patients (isolated activities). Aimed at detecting issues in the voice recognizing algorithms, the therapy adaptation algoritms and in the game dynamics from the point of view of user experience, and at testing the attractiveness of the narrative layers.
Third test: both therapists and patients (whole sessions). Aimed at evaluating some technical and qualitative aspects such as adaptation of each activity to its context, understandability, speed, fatigue levels of the users.
In terms of business feasability, commercialization, go-to-market strategy, financial plan, market entrance and IP strategy a whole business plan have been developed, adjusting next steps and business objectives and opening the way for a parallel strategy of medical and not medical marketing and commercialization plan with a B2B and B2C targeted strategy aimed at healthcare organizations, private practitioners, schools and final users.
Accomplished TRL 6 and business feasability, we belive next step is to apply to SME Phase 2 that will help on the next steps to extend validation of the product through large-scale pilots and clinical trials in real case scenarios, pass regulation (CE Mark) and prepare for commercialization in Spain. This phase will help explore the European target markets selected on Phase 1 through piloting activities, regulatory assessment and product validation. To adapt and validate Blapp for use in other languages re-designs, training and validation of the Speech Recognition and adaptive algorithms will be mandatory. Next steps in commercialization will focus on consolidation of commercialization in Spain, starting other market' need validation first in Italy by 2025 and market launch in strategic European countries selected in Phase 2.
