Summary:

• Roessingh Research and Development, Impact Lab for Personalised Health Technology in the Netherlands and Fruit Tree Labs, a Portuguese start-up focused on open-source dialogue technology sign a partnership agreement.
• The agreement formalizes years of existing friendly relations between the two parties.
• Collaboration paves the way for a deeper integration of two important software platforms: SenSeeAct, the general-purpose eHealth platform by RRD and DialogueBranch, the dialogue-scripting platform by FTL.

 

The fourth quarter of 2023 begins with the happy news of an official collaboration between Roessingh Research and Development and Fruit Tree Labs.

Roessingh Research and Development (RRD) is an Impact Lab for Personalized Health Technology, based in the eastern part of the Netherlands, with close connections to the University of Twente and Roessingh Center for Rehabilitation. RRD provides scientific research on innovative healthcare technology with a focus on the end user. For RRD, co-creation with end users and stakeholders is essential to ensure the innovation meets user needs and fits into the healthcare context.

Fruit Tree Labs (FTL) is a start-up, founded early in 2023 in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, focused on dialogue-driven interaction. The core product of FTL is a free and open-source dialogue platform that gives complete freedom and creative control to author-scripted conversations between users and virtual agents in serious web- or mobile application contexts.

CEO and Co-Founder of Fruit Tree Labs, Harm op den Akker has started his career working for RRD, obtaining his PhD degree through the University of Twente, and moving into a Senior Researcher position, strengthening the HCI-focused research at RRD between 2013 and 2021. Since then, relations have always remained warm, and collaborations continued through the co-development of open-source software. With the official collaboration agreement that is now in place, these friendly relations are now formalized in a long-lasting partnership.

For both parties, the partnership agreement comes at an exciting and fun time, as both RRD and FTL embark on new adventures in the open-source software community. RRD is in the process of publicly releasing its eHealth platform "SenSeeAct", allowing digital health developers to benefit from and build on top of a highly professional and stable software platform. At the same time, FTL recently launched the DialogueBranch platform made public (fully open-source and MIT licensed) and is looking for new partners and collaboration and funding opportunities.

With the new agreement in place, both parties commit to integrating these two open software platforms, strengthening the offering from both sides and opening new opportunities for potential users of either platform. Are you looking for a stable, highly customizable Digital Health platform, with integrated virtual agent capabilities? The combination of SenSeeAct and DialogueBranch might just be the thing for you!