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Innovation During COVID-19 Pandemic

Published

1 week ago

01/11/2025

Kossi Adzo

We talked to Kerwin Chang of BRISE Care BV on improving people’s respiratory health through intelligent data science solutions and this is what he had to say.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Kerwin Chang: We have been paying attention to the development of COVID-19 since the beginning. Because our company and some colleagues have a background of Taiwan where they have learned a lot from the previous SARS pandemic in 2002, we took immediate action when it came to Europe in February 2020. So far, we are healthy and will keep it in this way.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded BRISE Care BV.

Kerwin Chang: The company was founded by three friends, whose family suffered from allergy, asthma or COPD. I am one of them. We strongly believe that improving the living environment should help our families and other people who have the same problem besides medication. Three of us, everyone has his profession. I am specialized in environment climate control while others are good at IT, data science and indoor climate control. Combining with everyone’s expertise, we decided to start an adventure together, not only for ourselves but also for people health.

How does BRISE Care BV innovate?

Kerwin Chang: To improve our living environment, we must first know our environment. How to know it? Of course, meter it. So, we began to innovate those traditional air purifiers. Besides choosing the optimized filtration technology, we have made the air purifier much more intelligent through IoT technology, data science and machine learning. Our vision is to improve people’s respiratory health through intelligent data science solution.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Kerwin Chang: Due to the coronavirus, the air quality has got so much attention than ever. The COVID-19 can exist in aerosol for a long time, and the air purifier with a HEPA system can help reduce risk significantly along with ventilation. Fortunately, we have been developing our products since 2017 and have had a name in the market. Since the pandemic came to Europe, we have received a lot of attention. We have also developed a unique anti-epidemic filter that can even degrade micro-organisms such as viruses and bacteria inside the filter (not only filtering like other types). It makes us distinguished from other brands.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Kerwin Chang: Innovate something that you are involved with, especially for your loved ones.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Kerwin Chang: Take a short break and think positively.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Kerwin Chang: A few brands, such as Dyson and Philips, have a lot of financial power to invest in marketing and advertisement, but we don’t have. As a relatively small brand, we can provide a fair, personal and direct service to our users. Besides, because of the air purifier market’s growth this year, many new companies import cheaper OEM models from China and sell them at a lower price. That has also been confusing consumers.

We believe that in the future, a similar pandemic crisis will happen again. No matter how severe it would be, we must prepare for it. Therefore, besides air purification, we are developing the new products to reach what the air purifier cannot. We can offer a complete air purification solution and surface disinfection with this new technology, complete protection.

Your final thoughts?

Kerwin Chang: We were in the listing in Startup since 2017, and we are scaling up this year. We will introduce more new products for the coming years, including a new product line, respiratory health, and specially post-corona-pandemic time. We do hope that we will here again next year.