Prevention and access to health information - Interview with Silke Roemer-Scheerer about evita.care

Silke Roemer-Scheerer - a student in the 7th semester of the Bachelor's degree in Nursing at RWU - founded her start-up evita.care with her husband Markus Roemer in 2024. They want to use the website to make it easier for users to access reputable and reliable health websites.

What prompted you to found your start-up evita.care?

There needs to be a change in care and the healthcare system towards more preventative work. That's why it's important that patients get to grips with the topics of health prevention and maintenance even before they go to the doctor's surgery. Information on the internet is easily accessible, but often not reliable. This is a problem. Misinformation can lead to incorrect diagnoses and treatments. But there are also various sites that provide serious and evidence-based content. Unfortunately, this does not always reach users. With our start-up evita.care, we want to close this gap and provide people with easily accessible health information from reliable sources.

How exactly does evita.care work?

Anyone interested in researching a health topic can use the topic cluster or the search function to be forwarded directly to one of the reputable sources with just one click. Specific questions can be answered via our chatbot. It only accesses information from the linked and verified pages. The sites with medical and psychological content were selected by me, but have been checked and certified by institutes such as the German Network for Health Literacy.

What added value does evita.care provide for users?

We provide information via various media through so-called preventainment - in other words, prevention and entertainment. We have self-tests, explanatory videos, a YouTube channel and a chatbot. You can also find checklists to prepare for conversations with doctors on our website. Through this look and feel and this interaction with various tools, we want to encourage users' interest in health-related topics on our website.

Where will evita.care go in the future?

The site is currently intended for free use. In the long term, commercialization would be nice, but it is not yet clear where the journey will take us. For medical practices, we already offer the creation of websites that provide both the content of evita.care and the offers of the respective practice. The ideas for developing an app and cooperating with schools and teachers are still in their infancy. After all, prevention should start in school education in order to prevent illnesses in good time and maintain health.

What motivated you to get involved with the topic of care in the first place?

I had worked as a nurse for 20 years and completed further training as an alternative practitioner and osteopath, but I was still missing a stronger evidence-based scientific component. I am now in the 7th semester of my nursing studies at RWU and this has brought me a lot further in terms of both my professional and practical skills. It was also during my studies that I developed the idea for our start-up. In my opinion, we will not be able to avoid academization of the nursing professions in the long term. It can no longer just be about providing care - prevention is becoming increasingly important. I hope that the upcoming Nursing Competence Act will bring about change.