AWS Pioneers Project

The job isn’t getting any easier.

It is estimated that there are currently around 5.7 million people in need of care in Germany alone, projected to grow to around 7.7 million by 2070.

At the same time, there is a chronic shortage of care workers, with the risk of burnout almost twice as likely compared to other professions.

 

Pen and paper

CareMates is a cloud- and AI-powered software for patient admissions aimed specifically at elderly care and social services in Germany. It digitises the process of admitting patients, cutting down on tedious admin and giving care workers precious time back to spend with patients.

Hayward and one of the other three co-founders Johannes Kiwi met at Digital Product School by UnternehmerTUM in Munich. After interviewing caregivers, the team identified patient admissions—still largely paper-based in Germany's undigitised care sector—as the core problem.

“There were software products, but they were legacy systems, so the caregivers had to do a lot of things with pen and paper,” says Hayward.

Facilities receive, on average, five to 10 requests each week, and because there is such high demand, there are long waiting lists.

“Requests were filed on paper, and when capacity became available, workers would search through folders—often finding people had passed away or found other services,” adds Hayward.

With CareMates, the process is automated. Relatives no longer have to provide information over the phone but instead fill in a form online. AI can read and extract the relevant data to create a digital record that can be easily updated.

It means that up to a third of the day which may have been spent on administrative tasks is given back to workers.

“That time can be used giving patients the care they deserve, but it could also be spent just having a cup of tea, or recharging and relaxing, which helps the burnout problem,” says Hayward.

The firm has processed over 15,000 inquiries so far across more than 350 care facilities.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been involved since the firm was just an idea. The co-founders met an AWS solutions architect at the entrepreneur school in Munich.

"AWS has supported us since day one with ongoing technical guidance," says Kiwi, the firm's technical lead. "Building on AWS meant we could deploy rapidly without managing infrastructure—critical for a startup trying to reach care facilities quickly. We shipped to users in weeks, not months."

One of the biggest challenges for the firm was around the issue of data privacy, an area which is highly regulated in Germany.

“AWS was really helpful in supporting our compliance requirements. We took a lot of technical measures to make the product conform to data privacy regulations.”

Its AI services are all built on Amazon Bedrock.

“We are constantly evolving our AI functionalities, and Amazon Bedrock has been super helpful for that,” says Kiwi. "Amazon Bedrock gives us access to multiple foundation models and the flexibility to evolve quickly."

The next stage will be looking at introducing agentic AI that can allow caregivers or relatives to talk to an AI assistant rather than fill in online forms.

In July 2025, the company was sold to myneva Group, one of Europe’s leading social care software providers.

“Now we’re bringing CareMates to Europe with strategic partners to unburden the sector not only in Germany but in the whole of Europe,” says Hayward.