Technology

Everybody has a say when it comes to helping refugees and asylum seekers in Europe. Thatwhy Anne Kjær Riechert co-founded the ReDI School of Digital Integration to harness the expertise of the tech community and help migrants. Riechert is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin to tell us the story behind this school.

As a student, you can sign up for free and attend classes for a semester. Itnot too demanding as classes take place two evenings per week. You&ll learn about basic computing, developments in various languages (web, Java, Python…) and meet people in the industry who might be hiring. If you work in the tech community, you can volunteer and give back by becoming a teacher or a mentor.

And itworking. Even Mark Zuckerberg had to visit when he was in Berlin:

Riechert also has an impressive list of jobs. She worked in corporate social responsibility and helped Samsung in Scandinavia. She moved to Japan for a research project. She worked on the StanfordPeace Innovation Lab in Berlin.

Itclear that she understands that too many tech companies are focused on profits without looking at the bigger picture. Everyone could use a little more empathy, and the tech community could use a lot more empathy.

Thatwhy I personally can&t wait to hear Anne Kjær Riechert at Disrupt Berlin.

Buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion and many others. The conference will take place on November 29-30.

In addition to fireside chats and panels, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield Europe to win the highly coveted Battlefield cup.

Anne Kjær Riechert

Co-founder - CEO, ReDI School of Digital Integration

Anne Kjær Riechert is CEO and co-founder ReDI School of Digital Integration. She is a 2006 graduate from KaosPilot in Denmark, a hybrid of a business and a design school. From 2006-2009, she worked as a corporate social responsibility consultant. In that capacity, she developed and implemented Samsung Electronics& award-winning corporate social responsibility strategy for Scandinavia. In July 2010, Anne moved to Japan, where she spent 2 years researching open social innovation and received the prestigious Rotary Peace Fellowship. In 2012, she moved to Berlin to set up the Berlin Peace Innovation Lab, which is associated with Stanford University. The lab focuses on how technology is facilitating emerging and measurable social change toward global peace.

In 2015, in response to the refugee crises, Anne co-founded ReDI School of Digital Integration, a vocational training program teaching programming and tech skills to asylum seekers. In 2016 and 2017 Anne was recognized by Capital Magazine as &Young Elite & Top 40 under 40& in Germany, in 2017 she won the &Victress Award& for outstanding female leadership, and in 2018 she was recognised by Edition F as 25 women revolutionising German industry.

French startup Alan is expanding beyond health insurance by offering telemedicine appointments directly from Alan . The company is partnering with Livi, KryFrench subsidiary.

While a handful of European countries already let you talk to a doctor using video calls, Francenational health system just started allowing remote appointments.

If you need to renew your prescription or your doctor already knows you quite well, chances are you don&t need to see your doctor in person every single time. With remote appointements, you can save time and talk to a doctor more quickly. This is particularly useful if you live in the countryside.

Kry is already a well-known startup when it comes to telehealth. The company raised a $66 million Series B round back in July and operates in three countries — Sweden, Norway and Spain. Kry is building its own team of practitioners that you can find on the platform. The company created a new brand for the French market and started operating a few weeks ago.

Alan customers will be able to talk to a doctor on Livi and get reimbursed by the national health system and Alan (Update: Alan reimburses everything). Ideally, you&ll be able to talk to a doctor within a few minutes between 7 AM and 11 PM.

So Alan isn&t going to handle remote appointments directly, but the startup is going to make it as easy as possible to talk to a doctor.

French startup Doctolib is leveraging its own community of practitioners to compete with Livi and other newcomers. In a couple of months, Doctolib users will also be able to book a remote appointment on Doctolib.

Those are two different approaches — an integrated user experience compared to a marketplace. Both provide advantages and disadvantages. But itgood to see that Alan is on top of recent regulatory changes to improve the user experience.