Most institutions caring for older people in a Portuguese municipality are small. A care home with twenty beds, a day centre, a home care service. They have dedicated teams and tight budgets, and rarely anyone whose job is to evaluate technology.
That is why the question "what if the council did it?" comes up more and more in our conversations. A town council (câmara municipal) can contract for the whole municipality what each institution, alone, would hardly contract.
What is already the council's job
The council does not start from zero. Since Decree-Law 55/2020, Portuguese municipalities have their own responsibilities in social services: they draw up the municipal social map, give opinions on new publicly funded social facilities, and run housing-comfort programmes for older people. They also coordinate the municipality's Social Network, where institutions already sit at the same table.
In other words, the council already knows how many institutions it has, where they are and what they lack. What it often lacks is a concrete answer for the time people spend with nothing to do.
How the arrangement works
- The council contracts, the institutions use it. The licence belongs to the council; each participating institution receives its own equipment and starts using it with its own team.
- Nobody buys hardware. The equipment is ours and is included in the licence. If a unit fails, it is replaced; if the municipality needs more, more are added.
- Where each unit goes is decided with the institutions. Institutions that record sessions keep each resident's data encrypted on the unit itself, with no internet, and then the unit stays with them: moving it around would mix data from different people. Many institutions use the headset without recording anything, just so the resident can relax or feel good, and in that case one unit can serve more than one.
- Everything else is included. Unlimited sessions, the scene library, the management app for the team, training and support.
Who sees the data
The council does not see residents' data. When the institution records sessions, who was in the session, what they saw and for how long stays with the institution caring for the person, encrypted on the unit. It is the same rule that applies when the institution contracts directly, and it does not change because the contract is municipal.
What the arrangement does not solve
- It does not replace the team. Every session needs a professional alongside. An institution with nobody available for that will not use the equipment, whoever pays for it.
- It is not a one-off purchase. The licence is annual. It should fit in more than one year's budget, so institutions do not start a routine that ends in December.
- It does not skip public procurement. The council contracts through a public procedure, as for any other service. We have written about what to put in the tender specifications and about buying health technology from a small company.
Where to start
- Ask the institutions. Which want it, and who in each one will run the sessions. Without that answer, nothing else matters.
- Start with a few. Three or four institutions with staff available are worth more than twenty with the equipment in a drawer.
- Decide where each unit goes. Which institution and, within it, which service.
- Talk to us with that map. The proposal is designed from it: how many institutions, how many units, which services.
RVer is a non-pharmacological complement, used under the supervision of professionals. It does not replace healthcare, clinical assessment or any prescribed therapy.
RVer is a virtual reality system for clinical use designed for healthcare settings, whose base product is registered as a Class I Medical Device with Infarmed (CDM 94571546) and carries CE marking under MDR 2017/745. The RVer Motion, RVer Neuro and RVer Exposure modules are in development and are not covered by that registration.