Care technology · Nursing home night care
Momo Medical
A sensor plate under the mattress and an app that tells night staff which resident needs them. More than 20,000 Dutch nursing home beds carry one. The evidence is strong on workload, thinner on falls, and the CE mark is not the one the company name implies.
Seventy seconds
The BedSense is a flat plate, close to a skateboard deck without wheels, that slides under a mattress at chest height. Pressure sensors read weight and its distribution. Piezoelectric sensors read vibration. Together they pick up a turn or a sit up, and the tremor of breathing and a heartbeat through the foam.
None of it is a camera. The app shows a ward at a glance: who is lying quietly, who is restless, who is about to stand up, who has stopped giving a sign of life. Momo says a bed exit can be flagged up to 70 seconds before it happens.
ZorgSaam, a care group in Zeeland running the system on 11 sites, tells its readers the warning arrives 30 to 90 seconds ahead. One of its night carers, responsible for 24 residents, put it this way: “De Momo geeft ons rust en overzicht. Je ziet meteen wie uit bed is en wie niet.” Calm and overview, and you see at once who is out of bed.
What the night used to be
Before, a night carer walked fixed rounds. Every room, every few hours, a door opening and a light going on. Residents woke. The alternative was a motion sensor on a pole beside the bed, which fired on a moving duvet as readily as on a person.
The pressure behind this is demographic. The Netherlands has about 130,000 nursing home beds, and the shortage of care workers is projected to rise from 49,000 people in 2022 to roughly 135,000 by 2031, on figures the company puts in front of its bondholders. In 2023 Gravemaker told an investor interviewer that a single carer is sometimes responsible for 50 residents at night.
Two students and the wrong problem
Momo began with a hospital request and a mistake. Reinier de Graaf Gasthuis in Delft asked two electrical engineering students, Menno Gravemaker and Ide Swager, to take on one of its problems. They settled on pressure ulcers, a condition Gravemaker had not heard of. Take-off funding from the Dutch Research Council paid for a prototype, and a follow on grant plus the Venture Challenge paid for test versions. Hospitals said they would buy it.
Then the nurses stopped using it. “But we’d never spoken to the people who actually used it in practice: the night shift. They simply didn’t have time for extra tasks.” Swager left; the pace did not suit him. Gravemaker went back to the wards, this time at three in the morning. “The night nurses told me about needs in their work that I hadn’t even considered.”
In early 2020 the company moved from hospitals to care homes, and from pressure ulcers to workload. The hardware barely changed. The proposition did.
From 3,500 beds to 20,000
Momo sold its first subscriptions in 2020 and joined Y Combinator in the summer of 2021, taking $125,000 at a reported 40 Dutch care locations paying €35 per bed per month. By May 2022 there were more than 3,500 beds. That August it listed a 9 percent bond on NPEX, a small Dutch exchange, and filled almost €1 million of it in about a week.
2023 was the breakout. A framework contract with the Brabant purchasing group ICWB covered 2,500 BedSenses; Mijzo, Amstelring, Thebe and Archipel followed. Momo won the public prize at the 2023 National Healthcare Innovation Award with 43 percent of the vote. In September 2024 the pension investor PGGM, acting for the healthcare pension fund PFZW, co led a €6.5 million round with NextGen Ventures. By September 2025 it employed 135 people, about 90 full time equivalents.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| CE marking basis | The September 2025 offering document states: “De BedSense systemen zijn CE gecertificeerd conform richtlijn 2014/53/EU.” That is the Radio Equipment Directive, not the EU Medical Device Regulation. Its risk section calls the current approvals “EMC testen & declaration of conformity”. No notified body, MDR certificate or device class appears in the document. | Public record |
| Independent effect study | Vilans, the Dutch knowledge centre for long term care, studied the product from 2021 to 2024 and reported in March 2025 on data from 18 organisations and 1,170 sensors. Measured benefits per resident per day: 1.41 fewer minutes of night rounds, 0.66 fewer minutes of unnecessary night checks, 0.66 fewer minutes of false night alarms, 0.63 minutes credited to fall prevention. The method is questionnaires plus earlier time measurements, not a controlled trial. | Independent |
| Fall reduction, as claimed | 40 percent in the 2022 offering document, repeated by Rabobank in 2023. A quarter in PGGM’s September 2024 release, citing Vilans. 28 percent in the 2025 offering document and on NPEX, citing a study by Momo Medical and the care group Laurens. The Vilans 2025 report gives no percentage, and the Laurens study is not published. | Claim has moved |
| Payer analysis | Health~Holland reports that Zorgverzekeraars Nederland, the Dutch health insurers association, found in 2024 a benefit of €4,906 per bed per year and 1,119 hours saved per ward per year, about 0.5 FTE. That analysis is not published. | Independent |
| Consent in practice | The IFOZ review of April 2023 found consent given for 95 to 100 percent of residents on dementia wards, but noted that many organisations work on the principle of implementation unless there is an objection. Where one organisation asked every resident, half of those on a somatic ward declined. IFOZ invested in Momo Medical in 2022 and is also a lender to it. | Investor review |
| Legal status of the alerts | Momo tells Dutch buyers that the app overview is not a freedom restricting measure under the Wet zorg en dwang once consent is given, while alerts set for an individual resident usually are and follow the Wzd step plan. ZorgSaam tells its own readers the BedSense falls under the Wzd and is switched on only with the consent of the resident or legal representative. | Framings differ |
| What is recorded | Pressure, weight distribution, posture and vibration, from which breathing and heart rate are derived. Momo states that no names are stored, that the app uses room numbers only, that data is held anonymously under the GDPR, and that it holds ISO 27001 and NEN 7510. Its privacy statement covers website visitors, app users and customer contacts, not resident bed data. Vilans lists “Minder privacy door continue monitoring” among the soft costs. | Company-stated |
| Peer reviewed evidence | No PubMed hits for the company or the product. No registered trial. No FDA 510(k) or PMA record. | Not found |
| North America | The 2025 offering document confirms sales in the United States and Canada in dollars, and flags US liability exposure and a 15 percent tariff on hardware. LeadingAge published a 2023 case study of three United Methodist Communities memory care sites in New Jersey. | Public record |
Read plainly: the workload case is the solid one. A research centre and an insurers association have both put numbers on time and money saved, from real wards at scale. The clinical case is weaker. The headline fall reduction has been 40 percent, then a quarter, then 28 percent, always sourced to work that is not public. And a product sold to help prevent falls and pressure ulcers carries a CE mark for being a radio, not for being a medical device.
What to watch
- Publication of the Momo Medical and Laurens study that the 28 percent figure rests on.
- Whether the added functions described to bondholders, including apnoea detection and signalling of declining mobility, trigger a conformity assessment under the EU Medical Device Regulation.
- Consent practice. Implementation unless there is an objection is a different thing from asking.
- The balance sheet. Equity was negative €3.4 million at June 30, 2025, and the NPEX bonds run to January 2031.
- North American growth against tariffs and US liability, both now named as risks.
In their words
“My grandmother was in a nursing home, I decided to join a lot of evening and night shifts. I needed to know how we can help nurses care for the people we deeply love. I found out they still worked with walkie-talkies and sensors that give 50% false alarms.”
Menno Gravemaker, founder, Y Combinator company page · Company
“We were too focused on our solution. What you actually need is to fall in love with the problem”
Menno Gravemaker, to the Dutch Research Council, 2026 · Interview
“De Momo geeft ons rust en overzicht. Je ziet meteen wie uit bed is en wie niet.”
Jessy, verzorgende IG on night duty, ZorgSaam, 2026 · Customer
“Je moet niet zomaar alle data willen gebruiken. Daar moet je nog een stap voor maken.”
Anonymised location manager, IFOZ implementation and impact review, April 2023 · Investor review
“While BedSense provides real-time data and alerts staff when residents are getting out of bed, it cannot guarantee the absolute elimination of falls.”
United Methodist Communities, LeadingAge CAST case study, December 2023 · Partner
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordInformatie Memorandum obligatielening III, Momo Medical Holding B.V.
- Public recordForm D, Momo Medical Group Inc., 0002036113-24-000001
- IndependentAnders Werken in de Zorg, Eindrapportage Bedsensor
- IndependentImplementatie & Impact Review Momo BedSense
- InterviewFrom pub idea to award-winning healthcare innovation
- IndependentDe innovatiereis van Momo Medical: van idee naar impact
- IndependentDutch-based Momo Medical raises €6.5M
- CustomerRust in de nacht: hoe Momo BedSense bij ZorgSaam bijdraagt aan nachtzorg
- PartnerNight Shift Revolution: Elevating Memory Care with the Momo BedSense
- InvestorPGGM investeert in Momo Medical in financieringsronde van 6,5 miljoen euro
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
